After The End
by harpandsword
Summary: Long after the Reaper threat is dealt with, Shepard and Kaidan go on one last adventure to help an old friend. Some...okay A LOT of Shenko. What? I'm a girl. Warning: this was written before ME2 and ME3 so there are AU elements to this story now.
1. Restless

Kaidan's son was crying.

He hadn't been. In fact when his restless father had crept into the room to check on him, he'd been fast asleep. However, in a gesture of fatherly affection, Kaidan Alenko had reached out to stroke his young son's dark hair, and accidentally shocked him with an electrostatic discharge. Such a small injury, but still it broke Kaidan's heart to have caused it.

"That's the curse of being a biotic, son," he breathed resignedly as he picked up the little human to cradle him in his arms. He knew his son would most likely manifest biotic powers. The mutation was in Kaidan's genome. It was also in his mother's.

"At least your parents have the luxury of knowing what will become of you, instead of worrying if you'll be crippled or develop a brain tumor."

It was true. The new generation of biotics were being born into their powers instead of developing them from accidental exposure to element zero. (Kaidan was cynical enough to notice the dramatic decrease in "accidental" exposures since it was discovered that biotic parents had a good chance of passing their powers onto their children.) And while he was grateful that his son was not at risk for the same side effects he was after his exposure to the unstable element, the worrying and the wondering had tortured his own parents after his exposure, he also knew that the boy had a rough road ahead of him, and that static shocks would be the least of his troubles. Somehow, he didn't think the slowly increasing number of humans with biotic powers was going to substantially stem the prejudice his son would face.

"Don't worry little one. You have two parents who will understand what it means to be a biotic in this world and we will never be afraid of you...Though you may learn to fear mother's cooking. Never trust anything that doesn't come out of the food dispenser."

"Is that so?" Came the familiar female voice of his wife. She had silently snuck into the room during his reverie. He turned to see her standing in the doorway, her red hair splashing down over a loose fitting, plain shirt that hung over a pair of equally loose fitting sweat bottoms. She wore a bemused look, but the challenge in her voice reminded him that not so many years ago, the same woman wore skin tight battle armor, had her hair cut short, brushing just under her chin, and that if he looked closely in the dim light, the evidence of more than a few fights still graced her face around her lower lip and right eye.

Undeterred, Kaidan continued, "Kyler, when you told me you wanted to make an old-earth recipe your parents passed down to you, I didn't realize that you'd grown weary of our attachment and were going to try to give me a heart attack with something I can only describe as, meat with so much spice in it I could no longer discern what animal it came from."

"You mean, chili."

"What a misleading name."

"Is that why you're up so late, lover?"She asked peering over his shoulder at their now contented son.

"I wish it was. I just... I woke up feeling uneasy. Like something was wrong. I checked the door to see if it was locked, I checked to see if I'd left something on, forgotten something, I tried to check on little one here," Kaidan lifted there son, "but just ended up waking him."

"Hmmm..." Kyler mused, "Per chance I should go get out the old pistol."

"Why's that," Kaidan lifted an eyebrow quizzically.

"Because in all the years I've known you Kaidan, you're the only man who ever made me start to believe the urban legends that biotics could read minds and tell the future."

Kaidan was about to return with a quip of his own when there was a loud knock on the front door to their living unit.

"Stay here," Kaidan said trying to pass their son to her.

Kyler looked at him incredulously. "Have you ever known me to play the damsel in distress?" And with that she playfully skirted out of the room leaving Kaidan and child.

"It's probably just one of the other colonists looking for someone to help with a downed generator or the scanner grid again," she called over her shoulder.

"And that's why the former soldier vice the engineer is answering the door?" He called to her and then more quietly to the charge in his arms, "Mommy is very silly sometimes."

With that he started into the hall to greet the latest frazzled colonist who was there to plead for assistance with whatever was broken this time. He really didn't mind. He knew they all had to pull together to make a go of a colony this inaccessible. It wasn't like back up was just a mass relay away. Besides, he liked being useful.

Being far from civilization had its perks as well. It gave his family a chance to blend in, not be stopped by everyone and their mother who had seen the news vids a few years back. No doubt the news media would have had a field day with his relationship with his former commanding officer. After their return from dark space, Kaidan and Kyler had thought that their notoriety would die down and they could go on with their lives, but it never happened. So they signed up for the most remote new colony on the most austere planet they could find. Kaidan worried that Kyler might not be comfortable with the idea, considering what happened during her childhood on Mindoir, but the tiny little planet on the verge of nowhere turned out to be just what his small family needed. In fact, Torox had begun to feel more like home than anywhere else he and Kyler had been. Whatever it was at the front door, he was sure he was more than equipped to handle it, right until he realized what it was at the front door.

"Shepard," came the booming voice.

Kaidan recognized the voice before he even rounded the corner.


	2. Old Friends

"Shepard," came the booming voice.

Kaidan recognized the voice before he even rounded the corner.

"Wrex," Kyler replied in a mix of both joy and bafflement.

"Actually, she took my name," Kaidan said inserting himself into the conversation as he walked in.

The krogan considered this for a moment. "Then what do I call you now?"

Kyler smiled, recalling a hundred happy memories of all the times she and the other human members of her crew had to explain earth idioms to Wrex and Garus and Tali and Liara. It's funny, whenever she looked back on all the time they'd spent on the Normandy together, it was always the small things, the inside jokes, and trivial goings on during down time that she remembered.

"It's an old earth tradition," she explained. "Women would change their last name to that of their husbands' when they were married. That way the whole family had the same last name."

"Like a clan."

"Sort of."

"Why didn't he take your name then, since you would have been our clan leader."

Kaidan was about to protest when Kyler, ever the diplomat, gracefully stepped in. "We thought it would help us blend in here better if I didn't have to introduce my self as Shepard, the first human Spectre, everywhere we went," Kyler tactfully steered the conversation away from the emasculation of her husband. The explanation was partially true, anyhow.

Kaidan finished the thought, "We wanted to lay low, that's why we came here in the first place, and greeting every potential new friend with, 'Hello, my name is Kaidan and this is my wife, Commander Shepard, savor of all sentient life in the galaxy' seemed to work against that goal."

"As it turns out," Kyler continued, "The name Alenko gained just as much notoriety, but at least by coming out here we got away from most of the Conrad Verners of the galaxy." Kyler rolled her eyes at the memory of the obsessive fan as she flopped onto their couch.

Wrex stared blankly at them for both. It was clear that the concept of going unnoticed was completely foreign to the krogan battlemaster. Finally, he spoke,"Too confusing. I'm still calling the commander Shepard."

Kyler was about to remind him that they'd both retired when the tiniest member of the Alenko clan decided to make his presence known to the new guest. Staring with wide-eyed interest at the largest lizard he'd ever seen in his short life, the toddler started to gurgle in delight as he reached forward in his father's grasp in an attempt to touch Wrex.

Wrex turned one giant eye to the toddler in what Kaidan could only guess was curiosity and hope wasn't hunger. "Who is this?"

"Ash," he replied.

Wrex pondered this. "I understand that you would want to honor a fallen warrior, but you named your son after a girl?"

"It's short for Asher, meaning blessed in one of earth's more ancient languages. But yes, we felt it would be an appropriate way for Ashley's memory to live on."

There was another awkward silence in which Kyler decided it was time to cut to the chase, "Wrex, we're glad to see you, but why are you here."

"Because I need your help, and you owe me."

***

"No. No way. This is ridiculous," Kaidan protested as Kyler rummaged through their closet, digging her way through layers of clothes, shoes, and odds and ends to get to the old storage container at the bottom of the domestic mountain.

"Kaidan, he's right. We do owe him. Do you honestly think we would have ever made it back from dark space without him? Do think we would have even been able to track down the relay to get to dark space without Wrex. Hell, go back to when this all started. It was Wrex that put the last bullet in Reaper Possessed Saren's head."

"This all started? I thought this was all finished. Done with. No more mission, just us. Jeese, Kyler, we're parents now. It's not like we can just drop the kid off at the living unit next store and go gallivanting around saving the galaxy. How many times, Kyler? How many times did we get close enough to death to reach out and touch his scythe? You grew up an orphan! Is that what you want for Ash?"

And with that he knew he had gone too far. That's the danger of love. You leave your guard down and your lover has intimate knowledge of where all the old injuries are, all your faults, misgivings, and fears. Being both a soldier and a medic, the irony wasn't lost on him that all the sensitive areas a lover reaches for, the delicate skin on the neck, the soft curves of the face...are all the same areas an enemy tries to strike for.

Kyler stopped rummaging through the closet, her shoulders slumped forward.

"Kye...I'm sorry..."

"You don't get off that easily," she whirled on him dangerously close to his face, pushing him back and ready to tell him off for his callous remark, but instead Kaidan grabbed her and pulled her to him. He held her there until she had finished squirming and beating on his chest, her fuming protests and angry epithets bouncing off him. He held her when her anger turned to sobs and he held as her tears slowly penetrated his shirt until he could feel their wet warmth touching his skin. When she finally pulled away she asked, "So what do we do, Kaidan? We can't just leave Wrex twisting in the wind. I want to be there for Ash, but I also don't want to raise our son to turn his back on his friends."

Kaidan looked at his wife for a long moment. "You're right." With that he reached into the closet and with a decisive thud he planted an old cargo container onto the floor of their bedroom. It was beat up pretty badly but you could still see the worn Alliance Seal stamped on the side.


	3. Goodbyes

Kyler stood outside their living unit, the contrasting angles of her face painted by the shadows of the rising sun. Her long hair was pulled back into a tight bun now, but a few loose strands fell along the outline of her cheeks. Occasionally the cold morning wind would pick up causing the errant hair to dance across her face.

It was a contemplative look Kaidan had learned to recognize. She was trying to estimate how many sunrises she had left. He hadn't seen that look in a long time and seeing it now made the knot in his stomach grow cold. He walked out to her and placed a hand on her shoulder, waiting for her to respond.

She turned her head slightly in acknowledgment of his presence. "I'll miss this place. It reminds of all the happy times I had Mindoir, before the batarians attacked. It reminds me that it wasn't all bad. It reminds me that a part of me still loves colony life, despite everything that happened."

"We're coming back."

"I hope so."

"We are."

"I've been thinking about what you said last night," she said.

"Kye, I was a jerk last night. I can't begin to..."

"No," she interrupted, "You were thinking with your head. That's just who you are. You always analyze situations with a soldier's detachment. And you're right. I don't want Ash to grow up an orphan. Kaidan, you're not the one that talked Wrex into joining the mission to stop Saren, you're not the one that made him help destroy a cure for the genophage, and you're not the one that convinced him that he needed to go back and fight for his people. You owe him nothing. You don't have to come with me." With that she turned to face him, an expectant look on her face as she awaited a torrent of protests.

They didn't come. Instead Kaidan traced the small scar the graced her right eyebrow and ever so quietly counted, "One." Next his hand brushed her shoulder where he knew an incendiary had burned through her armor and scarred the patch of skin beneath. "Two," he said. Then he put his thumb to the scar on her lip and continued, "Three."

"What are you doing?" She asked, shaking his hand away.

"I'm counting all the scars that I, personally, patched up. You don't honestly think I'd let you go without me, do you?

"No, but I had to give you the option."

"And I had to say no."

" I guess this means I know where we're going next."

"Where?"

"Amaterasu."

"Why?"

"What's the first name that comes to mind when think of the word family?"

"Ah. Agreed."

***

Kaidan carried two medium sized packs out to the landing field. Wrex's personal shuttle was the only vessel sitting in the dust. There were no ships stationed at the colony. The only traffic the landing field ever saw were the resupply ships that would bring the colony goods it couldn't produce itself. And those only came around on fixed schedules. Torox wasn't easy to get to. Of course that was the planet's original appeal.

"Hon, where's the rest of our equipment?"

"Inconspicious, remember?" Kyler said balancing Ash on her shoulders. "I just brought the pistols, the amps, and your omni-tool. Besides, Wrex said he brought us some new toys from Tuchanka. Said something about this old crap wouldn't last ten seconds in a firefight."

Kaidan frowned looking down at his beloved Savant X omni-tool. "That was state of the art prototype equipment. It couldn't have been that far outclassed in the past few years. The Alliance is still carrying Lancers."

"That's a testament to the politicians' apathy towards their military, not the weapons developers' lethargy."

"Good point," Kaidan acquiesced as he cocked his head to the side.

At that moment, a lanky pre-teen boy ran up to the couple as they were talking. Kaidan looked up to see the boy's parents were following close behind but at a more reserved pace. "Kaidan," the boy called. "Kaidan! Please don't go."

The boy's father looked apologetic as he approached. "Thaniel, let Mr. Alenko be," he said catching up to his son and putting his arms around the child. His wife stood close behind him, the worry just as evident on her face as it was on her sons'.

"It's alright, Alex," Kaidan said the father as placed a hand on the boy's shoulder. "I'm going to miss my good friend, Thaniel too."

"But Kaidan, what if there's another cave in at the mine?" The boy continued. "Who will save everyone?"

Kaidan laughed at this. "Thaniel, you guys can get along without us for a few weeks."

"No. No we can't," Thaniel protested.

"The boy seems to like you, Alenko," Wrex called from his shuttle as the passenger ramp descended.

Alex looked hard at the Krogan that had arrived late last night under dubious circumstances. The colonist had been working air traffic control at the time and it had taken Wrex over an hour to convince the wary soul that he wasn't going to harm the colony in any way and to let him land. Wrex couldn't really blame the man. Krogans were infamous for having no qualms about who hired them to do what and the people of Torox had only minimal defenses. If they had to fight, they would much rather shoot a potential slaver vessel out of the sky than face them on foot.

"It's a long story, Wrex," Kaidan replied.

"Good thing we have a long trip ahead then. Your wife harassed me to within an inch of my life in order to get me to share my stories. Don't think I won't return the favor." Kaidan eyed Wrex nervously. He wasn't comfortable when the enormous battlemaster even jokingly threatened him.

Ignoring the interlude, Thaniel's father turned to Kaidan, "My son's exaggerating but not by much. It's comforting to the colonists out here on the raggedy edge to have two trained Alliance soldiers, not to mention a Specter, with the colony."

Kyler understood the sentiment all to well. _Maybe if there had been a couple more retired soldiers on Mindoir..._ No, she told herself. It does no good to rehash the past. Besides, being a tactician, she also realized that their presence could attract unwanted company as well as deter it, but she didn't expect a civilian to think like that.

Alex's wife continued, "And it's not lost on the colonists that you're taking your son to another planet to be watched over while you attend to," she paused to look Wrex up and down, "business."

"We're not abandoning you," Kyler promised. "Believe me we wish we could stay, and we will come back."

"I hope so," Alex replied. "You, both of you, have made a big impact on this colony. We don't want to lose you."

Wrex laughed uproariously at that. "Shepard makes a 'big impact' everywhere she goes. Hell, I've even seen her use a nuke to take out a single building." The tone of his voice left no doubt in her mind as to what building he was referring to. "Come on you two. If you insist we drop off the little tyke with the Williams sisters, then we need to get a move on. Honestly, if he's anything like his mommy and daddy, I say we take him with us. He could be useful."

"Wrex, he's not even a year old," Kaidan replied incredulously.

Wrex snorted derisively "I'd already killed a man by that age."


	4. Revelations

With the course set in and Ash tucked in bed in the rear passenger cabin, the three adults had some time to talk.

"All right, Wrex," Kyler said sitting down between her husband and the krogan, "Show us what you've got."

"I'm warning you, Shepard. It's not pretty."

He pulled up the file on the vid screen. The view panned across a ransacked medical bay. Computers and diagnostic equipment lay devastated.

"What's that?" Kaidan asked pointing to a small brown and grey splotch in the bottom right hand corner of the view screen. He typed the commands into the computer that would freeze the footage and zoom in on the anomaly. He immediately regretted his decision.

"Is that...was that a salarian?" Kaidan asked through his grimace, hoping the effort to talk didn't cost him his lunch.

"That was Dr. Sabon."

The mutilated corpse on the screen looked like something out of a horror vid. Kyler had to force herself to study the screen in search of clues.

"Dr. Sabon? As in the doctor heading up the genophage cure research team?"

"No," Wrex rumbled. "Dr. Sabon as in the doctor who found the cure for the genophage."

The two humans glanced at each other.

"Wrex," Kyler started, "We may live out in the middle of nowhere but I'm pretty sure a discovery like that would have hit the news vids."

"Unless," Wrex countered, "the cure was difficult to make and slow to manufacture. Unless we didn't want the krogan warring with one another, killing each other off before we could mass produce the drug that would ultimately save them"

"Killing off one's own race in an attempt to perpetuate it would be kind of ironic," Kaidan remarked.

"So glad the situation amuses you."

"It makes sense," Kyler thought allowed. "How would one decide who would be allowed to procreate and who would be put on a waiting list. Do you pick the most prominent? The strongest? The smartest? Do you set up a lottery or give the cure out on a first come first serve basis."

"Exactly," said Wrex. "We decided to hold off announcing the success of the research until there was a way to mass produce the cure. It would have been a matter of mere years before the cure could have been available to every krogan in the galaxy. Instead, every scientist working on project was killed and the research destroyed."

"Do you have any leads," inquired Kyler?

"You tell me, Shepard. What do you think caused damage like that?"

Kyler had spent plenty of time on enough battle fields to know what happens to body that is subjected to shearing gravitation fields. She'd even warped a few of her own enemies before, but never to this extent. She had also noticed there was very little collateral damage to the room. The computers were damaged. The scientists were mutilated, but everything else was clean.

"A very powerful, very controlled biotic."

"An asari commando to be exact."

"But why would the asari want to destroy this research?" Kaidan chimed in. "Of all the races in the galaxy they've been the most patient and the most tolerant of the krogan. Hell, didn't they just have another parade celebrating the krogan defeat of the rachni?"

"What makes you think it was the asari government that did this? You don't think mercs take jobs on the basis of their personal governments' positions, do you?"

A sudden realization dawned on Kyler, "Aleena," she said.

"Bingo."

"Wrex, from what you've told me, that doesn't sound like her."

"She's a merc, Shepard.." Wrex shook his head. "You still can't wrap your mind around it, can you? After all you've seen? Doctors experimenting on living subjects, colonists used as lab rats, you own parents slain for what? Because they were between the batarians and some choice human cattle."

"Wrex..." Kaidan's voice was full of warning. The krogan ignored him.

"You still can't understand how someone can be out only to help themselves. That they might take actions that would benefit them regardless of the consequences for others. They might even do things they find personally disgusting, or things they thought were personally disgusting 'til the found themselves doing 'em, just for a few creds. That's what a mercenary is, Shepard."

"I understand the concept, Wrex" she let a bit of disdain slip into her voice. "I just can't imagine bringing myself to make those decisions. I hope I never can."

"Yeah, Shepard. I hope your never can either," Wrex's response seemed genuine.

There was a long silence in the room as each party considered what to say next.

Kaidan was the first to break the silence. "Wrex, what do you want us to do? I mean if the research is gone and the scientists are dead..." he let the though linger for a moment. "I hope you didn't drag us out of our home just to get vengeance."

"Just vengeance. Someone just gave my entire race a death sentence, _again_, and it's just vengeance? Well no Alenko, I've got news for you. I want to kill that bitch but I didn't disrupt your domestic bliss just to find some battle buddies. There is one element of the research we don't think was destroyed. Or at least we can't find any evidence that it was."

"Yeah, what's that?"

"A krogan child."

***

The trio has stayed up some time discussing their next course of action, which leads to follow up on first, and remembering who still owed them favors. After awhile, Kyler decided it was time to turn in. Hearing her son stir in the back cabin probably had something to do with it. She left the two men to the piloting and went to go help Ash settle back into slumber.

"So, it seems like that Thaniel kid has quite the crush on you."

"Ha, ha, Wrex. Very funny. He looks up to me. That's all."

"Hmph, really? Someone looks up to you?"

"Is that so hard to believe?"

"Since you asked, human, yes."

Kaidan swung around in the co-pilot's chair to face the krogan. "All right, Wrex. Seriously, what is your problem. We dropped everything to come help you at a moments notice and you continue to be an ass at every opportunity. So tell me, honestly, what do you have against me?"

Wrex didn't hesitate. "You're not good enough for her."

"What?!?"

"I thought humans had pretty decent hearing."

"I was giving you the chance to pretend you didn't say that."

"Why, human? You going to hurt me? I'd like to see you try," Wrex said leaning in.

Kaidan was offended enough not to heed the warning in Wrex's voice. "Look here, Wrex. I don't give a damn what your opinion of me is. But, if you want to keep us both by your side, you'd better at least pretend to be civil."

"I never wanted you. I was just looking for Shepard. Whether or not you were an added bonus or just added baggage is still up in the air."

"Well, then I guess I'm glad Kyler never came to you for dating advice. Just why, may I ask, am I so unworthy of my wife?"

"Because she's strong, a true warrior. You, I think you'd cave under the things she's been through. She deserved another warrior to be her companion. I'll never understand why she settled for you."

"Thanks, Wrex. This has been...enlightening"

"Don't mention it."

That's when the warning klaxon's started.


	5. Crazy Seems to Work For Us

**Hey everyone. Thanks for staying with me so far. Special thanks to those of you who took the time to review. I'll give everyone a heads up; my fear with this chapter is that I might have gone over the top. I know I tweaked some cannon before, but this time...it was more of an all out assault on cannon. Anyhow, I decided to go for it. Feel free to let me know if it's too much. I'll do a re-write. I already have a back-up plan for this chapter. Don't believe me? Kosmokomik there's a present for you in chapter four. A slightly stilted present, but a present none the less.**

**As long as there's a backspace button, there's time travel.**

______________________________________________________________________________

The small transport shuddered under the impact of the first salvo. Kaidan changed the camera angle on the vid screen to get a view aft. The vessel that lurked behind them was only slightly larger, but still menacing. He couldn't immediately recognize it as any standard class of starship, human or otherwise.

Kaidan appeared more annoyed than alarmed. He'd expected to be stalked, attacked, shot at, blown up, etc... He had served with Commander Shepard for four years after all, before maternal instinct had squeezed some of the crazy out of her. However, he had hoped to have his son safely ensconced with the Williams by the time the gun play started. "You have got to be kidding me. We were five minutes away!"

"I told you this move was too predictable."

"Do we have any weapons on this thing, Wrex?"

"Why yes, Alenko. Didn't you see the main cannon when we boarded ?"

"We have nothing?" Kaidan said has he glanced sideways the krogan.

"Kinetic shields."

Suddenly the stars on the vid screen changed direction violently and Kaidan nearly fell from his seat.

"Wrex, what the hell are you doing?"

"Taking the ship into the densest part of the asteroid belt that circumscribes Amatursau's orbit. They'd have to be suicidal to follow us in."

"The corollary to that statement is that we'd have to be suicidal to enter it in the first place!"

"Exciting isn't it?"

"What the hell is going on?" Kyler's voice suddenly held all the vestiges of command it had so many years ago, loud, concise, and harsh. Kaidan looked over his shoulder to see she here standing in the back of the main cabin, one hand on the safety rail for balance and the other clutching Ash to her side.

"We have...hostile company," Kaidan between the metallic pings of bits of rock and ice hitting the hull. Kyler shot him a look that screamed, _oh really?_ Kaidan as he turned to Wrex, "Do try to miss some of the debris."

"You're choice; I can hit the big ones or the small ones."

"I miss Joker."

"You hated Joker."

"I miss his flying, not his mouth."

Suddenly the room was filled with white-hot light. The passengers had to shield their eyes before the vid screen automatically compensated and damped the brightness of the display.

"Told you they'd have to be suicidal to follow us in," Wrex said, eyes still fixed on the controls.

_CRACK!_

"Hmm..." Wrex pondered, "That didn't sound good."

Kaidan's fingers danced expertly across the controls. "Part of the debris from the ship penetrated our outer haul." He hadn't finished his sentence before they all heard the tell-tale hiss of gas escaping a pressurized cabin into the vacuum beyond. "And inner."

"There's no way we can land like this," Kyler said. Kaidan heard the fear in her voice, but he knew it wasn't for her own life.

"We don't have much of a choice unless either of you can breathe vacuum," Wrex said as he maneuvered the shuttle for approach.

"Escape pods?" Kyler suggested.

"None on board," Wrex growled in concentration as the shuttle hit the atmosphere of the planet.

Kaidan briefly mused on the irony, that Wrex the mercenary, who had to have every new toy from every new merchant, who had to be prepared for every contingency, Wrex, the ultimate gear freak, had a ship without escape pods.

The thought dissipated quickly though as he glanced back at his wife and son. The planet's surface was getting closer at the correct rate, but he could almost feel another protective layer of the hull slough off as they continued their descent.

_No. _He thought. _NO! We did not fight through impossible odds time and time to be taken out by some two-bit merc. I did not protect every sentient life in the galaxy just so I could fail to protect my own family. No,no..._

"NO!" He vocalized his last thought as he stood and flared up in the middle of the ship. Blue light lapped across the walls of the cabin like so many waves. Everything in the room took on a faint blue glow as the gravitational fields washed over him.

Wrex sounded irritated. "Yeah, we're all biotic Alenko," he snorted. " What the hell do you think you're going to accomplish?"

Kaidan wasn't listening. He couldn't. He was concentrating, more than he had in his entire existence. He had to visualize something he couldn't see, something he had to take for faith was there. The strain was enormous and his vision almost immediately began to tunnel.

"No," he groaned. He couldn't pass out. Couldn't fail.

That's when the other passengers noticed something. They had stopped hearing the screechings of metal plating sloughing off the side of the hull.

For the first time since Kyler had met him, Wrex looked dumbfounded.

"I don't know if he's pushing the atmosphere away from us, pulling the ship together, or putting a barrier around the whole damn ship but...this isn't possible. An Asari, a team of Asari commandos could't do this."

Sweat poured of Kaidan. He felt as if a corporal hand had reached into his brain and begun to squeeze the soft tissue inside, destroying the very essence of who he was. It was the most painful, frightening experience of his life. Not only was the pain excruciating, but it was self inflicted, leaving open the temptation to stop, to free himself from this nightmare. All he had to do was let the darkness close in around him. There would be no more pain...ever.

Somewhere, his subconscious registered the fact that others were talking to him, but he couldn't make out the words. He couldn't even recognize the voices. Now he couldn't see. There had previously been a pinpoint of light, a small beacon that let him know he was still awake, still fighting, but now there was nothing.

Then all his senses failed him.

***

Bright light. There was light again. Kaidan slowly opened his eyes and tried to focus on the shadowy figure hovering over him. He eyes tried desperately to focus. He felt as if he were looking at a faulty vid screen. Eventually he was able to make out generalities. It was a human female, fairly young. Then as shades of color came back he could tell she had soft olive skin and long dark hair that was tied back into a pony tail. His senses kept trying to feed him pieces of information but his brain couldn't put them together. It was too sluggish to make the connections. Finally, the figure spoke.

"Morning, L.T."

"Oh God, I'm dead."


	6. Waking up and Rude Awakenings

"No silly," Sarah Williams laughed at him. "You're in the hospital."

"How long was I out?"

"Eight days."

"Ash?"

"With Abby."

"Kyler?"

"Noticed your arm is probably numb?"

"No. Why?" We struggled to look down at his appendage. Obscuring his view of the lifeless limb was the head of his wife.

"She wouldn't leave your side L.T."

"No one's called me that for a long time, Sarah. It wasn't even my last rank."

"Sorry, force of habit."

By this time the noise and movement had awoken Kyler. Her heart skipped a beat when she realized he was awake.

"Kaidan," she dove face first into his chest and probably hugged him harder than any hospital patient should be held. "They said they didn't think you'd come out of it. Ever."

"Out of what?"

"You weren't just unconscious, you were in a coma," she looked up at him, looking more vulnerable than he'd seen her in a long time. "Kaidan, they said you wouldn't wake up or that you'd be brain damaged. I thought I'd., I'd..."

He didn't force her to verbalize the thought. Instead he pulled her to him very gently, partly because of the tenderness of the situation, mostly because he was still very weak.

The stream of doctors and nurses that followed his awakening didn't even begin to slow down until late that evening. Every few seconds a new doctor or scientist would come in, speculate as to what happened, take readings, and then scurry back to their labs. Finally, around nine, the flow had been stemmed to a trickle of nurses. Kaidan had fallen back asleep after promising Kyler that he would wake up again in the morning. That's when she head one of the hospital staff outside the door whispering vehemently, clearly annoyed.

"Sir, you cannot go in there. It's not visiting hours and I sincerely doubt you're family, sir. Sir!"

"Not even going to threaten her Wrex?" Kyler asked as he lumbered in.

"No...so did they figure out how wonder boy here broke the laws of biology."

"No. Some are trying to claim it's an adrenal rush, but then every biotic human soldier who's been in a life or death situation would have displayed the same kind of power levels."

"That would be inefficient," Wrex laughed. "Soldiers performing one good move and then falling into week long comas. Would give your opponent plenty of time to recover from whatever you did. Unless of course your opponent was crumpled up into a little ball of broken bones and tissue."

"There's other things a human body does in high intensity situations. I've seen training vids of an Alliance soldier pushing a 600 pound rock of his chest. Normally, we only use part of our strength. It would damage our body's if we used all the muscle fibers we have in our bodies in one effort, but sometimes the brain will trigger something that causes us to fire all of the muscle strands at once. It could be a similar function. The brain tells all of the biotic nodes to fire simultaneously,."

"Okay Shepard. The human body's got a lot of neat tricks, although I prefer just to be a stronger species in the first place, but that still doesn't really explain what happened."

"Honestly, Wrex. I don't care. We're alive. We're all alive," she said staring at the sleeping form of her husband.

"You mind if I talk with your husband alone for a minute?"

"He's asleep, Wrex."

"It's important."

"Alright," she eyed him cautiously as she walked out to explain to fuming night nurse that Wrex, was in fact Kaidan's adopted brother and that they'd had a complicated childhood.

"Alenko," Wrex said as quietly as a krogan speaks while he shook the bed, "Alenko, wake up."

"Wha? No. Sleep."

"Alenko I need to talk to you."

"Hmmm..no..wait...morning...'til morning."

Wrex was starting to get impatient. He wasn't looking forward to what had to say. "Kaidan!"

He didn't exactly shoot awake but Wrex's use of his first name defiantly got his attention. "What?" He said groggily.

"I was wrong about you."

"What?"

But Wrex had already turned to leave. Kaidan laid his head back down and smiled to himself as he closed his eyes. He sincerely hoped he was lucid enough to remember the night a Krogan Battlemaster pseudo-apologized to him.

Kyler was walking back in as she had finished expounding upon her ever increasingly ridiculous tale of how her "brother-in-law" came to be a part of their family.

"We need to get out of here soon, Shepard."

"I know Wrex, between the news vids on the crash and just plain being stationary, anyone looking for us will have an easy time of it."

"Actually, I did," came a sickeningly sweet voice from behind them. Wrex silently cursed himself for allowing someone to sneak up on him. Both he and Kyler turned slowly to face the owner of the voice.

There stood the voluptuous blue form of and asari clad in black armor.

Kyler was the first to speak, "Aleena, I presume?"

"Correct."

"Well at least she didn't kill us with our backs turned," Wrex submitted.

"I have no intention of killing you, Wrex."

Kyler and Wrex exchanged incredulous looks with each other, and then the asari mercenary.


	7. Long Night

Kyler mentally chastised herself. She would have never allowed a mercenary to sneak up on her when she was in command of the Normandy.

"I'm not going to kill you, Wrex," Aleena interrupted Kyler's self upbraiding. "If I was, I wouldn't have called your attention to my presence," Aleena rolled her eyes in a mannerism very uncharacteristic of any asari Kyler had known.

Most representatives of the species she had met were more formal, reserved. Even those engaged in more distasteful pursuits had talked down to Kyler as if her breaking up their illegal activities was somehow the impertinent interference of a child.

"And that's really not necessary," Aleena tilted her head to indicate the Kyler's steadily glowing biotic charge.

Kyler hadn't even been conscious of the fact that her body was silently preparing to unleash a biotic attack. Her instincts and body had simply been trained to immediately react to danger by years of her life depending quick, decisive, action. It was almost beyond her control. "I'll be the judge of what's necessary," she responded, but none the less, she diffused her charge. The blue light faded away until the only evidence she had ever been poised to attack was a static charge left in her hair. A few lose strands bounced against an invisible barrier inches from her face. "Why are you here?" Kyler asked, cutting to the chase.

"Maybe I wanted to help an old friend."

"An old friend that tried to kill you?"

"At least he was up front about it."

Kyler shook her head as if to free herself of the ridiculousness of the conversation. "Smart aleck quips aside, why are you here?"

"Credits of course. Although I would consider working with Wrex here a bonus."

The angry night nurse returned to break up conversation, "I suppose you're going to tell me that this is Mr. Alenko's mother?" The nurse directed the comment to Kyler. Before she could respond the nurse had thrown them out of the ICU for being 'boisterous.'

As they walked out to the lobby, Wrex pushed Aleena for answers. "I thought you were behind the attacks on the lab."

Aleena blew air through her lips in frustration. "Wrex, do you always assume that a certain asari mercenary is behind any attack that shows evidence of a strong biotic?"

"No," he turned his entire massive body to face her, "just attacks that begin with the same security corruption program a certain asari used to disable the security protocols on the space station I tried to kill her on." Wrex stepped closer. "Or attacks that erase data using the same technology a certain asari used for a particular volus bank job, or..."

"I think I see where this is going," Aleena put up a hand but seemed unflustered by the krogan's proximity. "But honestly, Wrex, I may be a wretch but I'm an honorable wretch. Do we have a more... private place to talk?"

"I have a brand new ship as it happens."

"Let's go then."

Kyler interjected, "Wrex, while I'd love to chaperon you two, I'm going to stay to watch over Kaidan. We've already had one attempt on our life since we left Torox. I have no doubt there will be another." She stared blankly at the hall they had just come from for a moment. "It's just a matter of time." She turned back to face them. "We can meet back up at the ship tomorrow morning. Wrex, I assume you can defend yourself should this turn out to be an elaborate ruse?"

Wrex grunted in acknowledgment as he and the asari mercenary turned to go.

"Oh, and Wrex..."

He turned to her, an undertaking for a species his size.

"If you two decide to have a rematch, do it outside the ship. Even mercenaries can't afford two new ships in a week."

Wrex laughed at this. "Depends on how good the mercenary is."

"So you're right, Shepard. He couldn't afford a new ship," Aleena called back as the two slipped out the door.

Kyler wanted more than anything to be given more insight into the situation she was suddenly a part of, but it was obvious Aleena didn't feel it would be prudent to discuss details in a public setting and there was no way, given recent events she would leave Kaidan unconscious and unprotected. She would have to wait to have her curiosity sated. After spending years working for the council, waiting a few hours for information didn't seem long at all.

She rubbed her eyes as she rounded the corner back to her husband's room. As her eyes refocused, she sighed wearily as she noticed the night nurse they had so thoroughly alienated was in the room checking stats.

The nurse jumped at the sound of another person entering the room. Something wasn't right. She didn't look frightened. She looked guilty. Acting on an instinct, Kyler drew the pistol she had concealed. The sound of the weapon expanding to it's full size was enough to get the night nurse moving, but she wasn't cowering for a corner or throwing her hands up in the air like an innocent civilian. No, this 'nurse' was trying to bum rush Kyler before she could fire, but she was sloppy, putting her face down low. With enviable economy of movement, Kyler's leg snapped out to catch her attacker full on in the face. The nurse's lower body continued forward. Her head did not. Two cracks reverberated throughout the room, one from Kyler's boot crushing the nurse's nose, one from the nurse's head colliding with the floor.

Kyler stepped forward never taking her aim off the woman lying on the floor. She planted her foot under the woman's shoulder and shifted to a one handed grip on her pistol. With her free hand she deftly grasped one of the hands the nurse was holding to her bleeding face and had it in a wrist lock by the time Kyler had pulled the woman's arm against her leg, placing her shin just below the elbow, expertly using her own body as a fulcrum to apply pressure to the nurse's elbow, forcing it beyond it's range of motion.

It was too easy. For a fearful moment, Kyler thought she had just attacked an innocent women in her paranoia. But then she noticed the device that the nurse had dropped. It definitely wasn't medi-gel.

"Who sent you?"

"Doesn't matter."

Kyler manipulated the woman's wrist, forcing her pinky closer to her forearm. The move would cause pain and deter the nurse from trying to escape, but wouldn't actually injure her. Kyler would never actually hurt someone she already had restrained, and she hoped her reputation hadn't preceded her so much that her current captive would bank on that fact.

"Does to me. Now, mind telling me what's that on the floor over there?"

"Doesn't matter. I'm already dead."

Kyler forced the woman to her feet, wrenching her arm behind her. Then, the former specter put her pistol back in it's concealed location and made a great show of putting two fingers on the woman's carotid artery.

"You seem pretty alive to me."

"For now. I've been discovered. There's no place for me to go. They'll find me. They're everywhere."

"Thanks, but if I wanted to watch a bad spy-vid, I would have logged on to the extra-net. Now, if you give me useful information, maybe I can pull some strings and get you put into a really, really, secure prison. What do ya say?"

"You can't save me. No one can save me."

Kyler exhaled and thought a moment. She knew it was a stupid move but she spun the nurse to face her and released her. "Look, it's obvious you got in well over your head. You're no professional. I don't know you're story but I know it's probably very sad. You probably fell on hard times and they promised you hope. You most likely regret the decisions you've made. Now, if you fate has already been decided as you say, then showing loyalty to whoever you work for will not save you. Die with a clear conscious. Tell me who you are and what you're doing here."

"Sir..." the nurse mumbled out and then went limp, falling into Kyler's arms.

"Dammit," Kyler spat out vehemently. She began mentally listing all organizations and persons which inspired such fear that their followers would rather die than fail as she laid the body on the ground. Who knew what nurse used to commit suicide or where it had been hidden. It didn't matter now. She had just closed the eyes on the nurse when hospital security showed up.

"Right on time," Kyler mumbled under her breath.

"Are you all right, Commander?" The lead guard asked. For once, Kyler was grateful for her fame. Instead of having to explain her standing over a dead body as the security guards rushed in, they simply assumed that she had been defending herself.

"Yes, I'm fine," she replied. And then to herself she added, "I think my husband and I will be checking out now."

* * *

"Should we call Wrex, tell him where we're going?" Kaidan asked.

"Can't risk someone intercepting the message. We'll tell him in person," his wife responded.

"Yeah...right," Kaidan shook is groggy head and then proceeded to stumble over himself.

"Do I need to carry you?"

"No, the once was emasculating enough." He grinned at her.

"Damn, muscle atrophies fast," she said looking at his emaciated form.

"I'll be fine," he looked into her eyes reassuringly as he placed a hand on her shoulder.

"Why are you comforting me?"

"Because you're my wife. Come on. Let's get a move on."


	8. Conviction

She looked around at the familiar landscape. Salty waves crashed upon the jagged rocks of Virmire. The warm sun was tempered by a cool breeze. The odd juxtaposition of the exotic getaway scenery and the reality of the situation was all wrong, almost perverse.

She looked around at her surroundings, unable to gain her bearings. Everything was muted, slow. That's when she saw Commander Shepard walk out of view, a bewildered Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams following behind. The image seemed to zoom, focus. Once beyond the range of prying eyes, the commander spun on Williams, more quickly than she would have thought possible for a human. Unexpectedly, the commander's arm shot out, thrusting the chief into a nearby rock face. In an instant Shepard was a mere inches from Ash's face.

"Do you want to die?" The commander demanded.

Thrown off balance by the sudden confrontation, all the chief could come up with was a confused, "What?"

"I think I was pretty clear," the commander articulated each word with a quiet intensity.

"Of course I don't want to die."

"You seemed pretty intent on going with the suicide team."

"I know my place, Commander. It's in the thick with an assault rifle, not trying to jury rig a makeshift nuke with an omni-tool."

"It's not your preference in missions that concerns me. It was the look of finality in your face when I said you could go. Look Williams, I'm in command here. That means it's my responsibility to know my people, know their mental state. If you're looking to clear your family name..."

"I have no intention of falling on my sword, Commander."

Shepard eyed her suspiciously, but seemed satisfied. She released the Gunnery Chief and started to walk away, instead she half turned to Ash and stated quietly, "We haven't come this far to lose one of our people now, Ash. Come back to me in one piece."

"Make it an order."

"What?" The commander was intrigued.

"Make it an order," Ash said with a grin. "I would never disobey a direct order. Make it official and I'll have to come back."

The commander smiled wryly at that. "Have it your way, Chief. Come back or I'll have you court martialed." With that she turned to walk back to the gathering on the shore.

Lt Alenko quirked an eyebrow at the sudden departure and reappearance of his CO. "If you don't mind me asking, what was that about, commander?"

"Girl talk, Alenko."

"Yeah, I don't think you really want to hear about what color armor the commander prefers, LT."

* * *

"Shit, shit, shit." Commander Shepard skidded to a halt.

"What are we going to do commander?" Garrus asked quickly.

"Save them both."

"Even you aren't that good, Shepard," Wrex admonished in his low voice.

"Bullshit," and then into her comm unit, "Ash, hang in there. I'm coming for you next."

"I think we both know that's not going to happen, Commander," her voice came over the crackling comm unit.

"Watch me," Shepard said to herself more than anyone else.

* * *

The waves of heat and pressure washed over Ash as she dove behind a cement wall for cover milliseconds after detonating one of the many fuel tanks scattered about her position. _Why the hell do they have so many of those? _She thought to herself. Then she laughed aloud. That could be her last thought in this life, the inexplicable amount of fuel tanks on a secret base on Virmire.

Another shock wave ripped through her. Somehow, the old war vids she'd watched religiously as a child had never managed to convey the intensity of an explosion in battle. It wasn't until one day at basic, when they finally got to throw hand grenades, that she realized that even behind thick cover, you could feel the device go off. It was a kind of sickening ripple effect.

She popped up quickly from behind her cover, picked a target, and squeezed off a few rounds. The snow blind rounds found the center of mass of a geth trooper. It dropped lifelessly to the ground and shattered. With the geth's attention on Ash, a nearby salarian took the opportunity to move to a more advantageous position.

A smile crept across the soldier's face. _"Fire without movement is wasted ammunition. Movement without fire is suicide." _The words of her drill instructor coming back to her. The gunnery chief shrugged to no one in particular, surmising that some things, like good tactics, crossed species.

A rumbling, clacking sound caught her attention. _No_, she thought. Popping up from a new position behind cover, Ash's fears were confirmed. A geth prime was running up the middle of the on coming hoard of geth. The lead metallic atrocity casually jogged over one of the salarian spies as it charged into her rag tag defense. It was too loud to be sure, but she thought she heard the crushing of bones under the blood curdling screech emitted from the wiry alien getting the life stomped out of it.

Captain Kirrahe was in front of the goliath, back pedaling, repeatedly firing shot gun blasts at the approaching juggernaut and yelling whatever passed for a salarian war cry.

"Stupid, brave, mother..." Ash said under her breath as she dove out from cover and tackled Kirrahe out of the way of the on coming metal creatures.

Once they landed, Ash slapped his helmet hard. "It's not time to die bravely, yet. Those things don't turn on a dime and once something's caught their attention they're oblivious to everything else. Draw them out, have a buddy take their flank."

The salarian shook his head, nodded, and got back up into his crouched position, ready to take the chief's advice when another geth drop ship came in for a strafing run from behind them. The rounds missed them but shrapnel caught Ash in the leg and abdomen and Kirrahe in the arm. The two started applying basic first aid, knowing it was probably a futile act. The medi-gel itched in their wounds as it fought to coagulate and stop the bleeding.

A sudden movement caught their eyes. Ash pulled herself to the edge of their cover to Saren step off some kind of hover board and begin marching forward.

"Is it time to die bravely now?" Kirrahe asked through strained teeth. Ash was about to hit him again when he flashed her a pained smile. She returned it with her own grin/grimace.

She looked around, noticing there was almost a strait line from their position to a lift, completely clear of geth. As long as it worked, who the hell cared where it went. Wherever it was, it wasn't here. All they needed was a large enough distraction to keep them from getting gunned down in the back as they made their way towards it.

"Not for you," Ash groaned, gesturing to the exit. "Get your people out."

"What?"

Before he could get an explanation, she had used her good leg and free arm to launch herself out into the open, firing at Saren's position as she landed hard on her shoulder. The shots sailed past him and into yet, another fuel tank dispatching the geth prime. The explosion rocked Saren but did not bring him down. He glared at the chief on the ground and snarled.

She smiled and continued to fire at the turian. Saren strode forward unperturbed and kicked the assault rifle from her hands. Ridiculously, Ash was inconsolably sad for the loss of the rifle. It most definitely wasn't standard issue. Shepard had bought that for her with her own credits. She watched it skitter away, probably never to be fired again and then she was lifted into the air, her broken body hanging limply in the air.

"Where's Shepard," Saren growled. Ash smirked. He was angry and he didn't know what was going on. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Kirrahe's men make their break for it.

"I'm coming home daddy. I hope you're proud."

"What?" A high pitched beeping drew Saren's attention to the grenade held loosely in her right hand. The explosion blew him back and drained his kinetic shields. Whatever turian there was left in him, it was hurting. He staggered up to his feet and looking around, he saw nothing but dead salarians and the body of the marine that just tried to assassinate him. He walked forward and kicked the body to make sure she didn't survive. With that he stepped back onto his hover board and left the area. This was obviously not the main attack. Shepard would be with the main effort, not some distracting maneuver.

* * *

"That's it. Nuke's set. Everyone's on board. Go," Shepard said continuing down the off ramp.

"Commander, where are you going?" Garrus asked, panicked.

"I'm going back."

Wrex stood in her, way, "No, we don't have time."

"That's right, so get the Normandy out of here."

Wrex slammed the controls that shut the cargo bay doors and grabbed Shepard's entire person with one arm, carrying her bodily to the back of the bay, only releasing her as the Normandy's engines fired and carried them away from the surface. The look she gave him could have melted glass.

They all raced to the cockpit in time to see Joker gritting his teeth as he pleaded with the Normandy's engines to go faster. The entire party shielded their eyes as the nuke went off. Shepard winced. The mission over, everyone turned back to head to the conference room. Shepard stared at Ash's seat for what seemed like an eternity before she spoke.

"You son of a bitch."

"We were out of time. All you were going to accomplish was getting yourself killed too!" Wrex responded.

"That wasn't your decision to make."

"No it was yours and you already made it. Now live with it." Then more quietly, "You protected the nuke, completed the mission. If it's any consolation, I would have done the same thing."

Shepard continued to stare at Ash's seat. "It's not."

Sarah Williams woke up with a start in her room, the sweat on her face illuminated by the vid screen she had left on. She rubbed her face, reminding herself it was just a dream, a vivid dream she'd had countless nights, but a dream none-the-less. Having it again tonight had filled her with a sense of conviction. Throwing her covers off, she got up strode silently across the room to the vid screen still diligently projecting the last item pulled up by its user.

She knew it was illogical to think she'd actually seen what her sister had seen on Virmire, but she believed it anyway. Her sisters always told her that her subconscious was just replaying details Commander Shepard had given her the day she came to tell the family her sister was dead. But her sisters didn't know something. Her sister's didn't know why Sarah would never let the Commander blame herself for what happened on the planets surface.

Her sister's didn't know that Sarah had had this dream, long before the Commander had visited their house on Amatersau. At first the idea had unsettled Sarah, but the more she thought about it, the more it made sense. Considering that they'd recently encountered alien species capable of merging minds with complete strangers, why couldn't she share that kind of special bond with her own sister, he own flesh and blood.

Anyhow, Sarah didn't believe in coincidence and she didn't believe that her reoccurring dream cropping up again tonight was on either. Without a second thought, she clicked "Accept" on the luminescent screen before her and went back to bed, certain that the dream would not return tonight.


	9. Puzzle Piece

"Alright, Aleena. Tell me what you're doing here," Wrex demanded as soon as the shuttle was sealed.

"You sure this vessel is secure?" She retorted.

"Right now, that's about the only thing I'm sure about. Now talk or walk. I don't particularly care which."

"If you knew what I had to say, you might not be so quick to cut to the chase."

Wrex merely glowered at her.

"You want to know who's behind this?"

"I would think that was obvious."

"The Illusive man."

"Cerberus?"

"Yes."

"Shit."

* * *

The Alenkos had silently made their way up to the Williams house. So far, it didn't appear they had anyone following them. Kaidan had collapsed by a tree near the clearing where the house stood.

"Hey, you gonna make it?"

Kaidan was breathless and motioned for Kyler to lean close so he didn't have to speak up. She leaned in only to be pulled into his lap and kissed her on the cheek. She glared at him playfully and climbed out of his lap extending a hand to help him up. He stared at it a long moment. Something flicked across his eyes. An unseen memory that still haunted him. Whatever the thought was, he quickly pushed aside. They were up and moving towards the back door in a moment.

They reached the old fashioned house and were about to knock on the door when it opened revealing a middle aged Mrs. Williams. "Come in. Fried chicken anyone?"

The Alenkos glanced at each other and entered the home.

The house was exactly as Kyler would have pictured it. The walls were cluttered with shadowboxes filled with the medals and ribbons of Williams past. Kyler noted a lone medal of valor in a place of honor. She would have known who it belonged to even if it wasn't placed next to a picture of Ashley done up in a full combat load. Pictures of the family were scattered about, each containing at least one person in a uniform of some sort. A beaten leather Bible sat on a corner table. In the center of the far wall was vid screen. It had been paused mid viewing. She looked at for a long while. There was a girl dressed in strange garb perched in a tree. It was the same species as the one in the front yard now but smaller and with its branches closer to the ground. 'Lynn liked strange clothes,' Kyler remembered, 'with tops you had to tie her into and lose swaying bottoms." That must be her sister. She couldn't have been more then 14. A slightly younger girl was sitting at the trunk of the tree reading a old fashioned book, paper pages and all. She seemed completely disinterested in what was going on here. Kyler guessed it was Abby. Over near what appeared to be a sandbox, Sarah's future aptitude for engineering was evident in the precocious seven year old who was clearly in the process of taking apart a data pad.

And finally, in the foreground was the unmistakable visage of a young Ashley Williams. She couldn't have been more then 16 years old.

"Would you like me to play it for you?"

Kyler jumped. She hadn't realized how long she had been staring at her dead friend's face. Worse than that, she had no idea how to answer. Was it appropriate to ask the mother of the Marine you killed to play home videos for you? Fortunately, She didn't have to come up with a response. Mrs. Williams gave a knowing smile and commanded the vid screen to resume it's playing.

"Dad, I was watching her," Ashley exclaimed." I took my eyes off of her for a split second and it was already apart. I'm not cut out for baby sitting!"

The young Sarah protested, "I'm making it better!"

"Yeah, right. My seven year old baby sister is fixing electronics."

At this point, Lynn made a dramatic leap from her perch and came running at Ashley with a wooden boken over her head. The camera man apparently had no intention of warning Ashley of the imminent attack, although it appeared he did step back. Right as Lynn was about to strike, Ashley side stepped and sucker punched her sister in the nose. It wasn't graceful, and was more forceful than necessary, but it was effective. It was Ashley to a T. Lynn's nose started bleeding. A wrestling match ensued. Abby looked up with little interest from her book. Sarah protectively grabbed up the pieces that formerly made up a data pad as the tussle came closer to her position. Within seconds Ashley had arm barred her sister and Lynn was crying mercy. With that the camera turned to see a younger Mrs. Williams coming out of the house.

"And I thought we were raising such nice young ladies," said Mrs. Williams as she strode into the picture.

"I didn't know how to raise ladies. I guess you should have given me sons," came the unfamiliar voice of Ashley's father. She had never had the chance to meet Mr. Williams. He had died before she had even met Ashley. Damn, Kyler thought, her husband, her daughter, how much more could this woman take?

"Hmmm... I do believe that would be your fault, dear."

"So it is. So it is. Why don't you hold this dear so that I may disentangle our daughters."

"With pleasure."

"Ashley, what did I tell you about being so rough with your sisters? Abby, go get your sister something to cover her nose with..." He strode out of the picture to ensure his orders were carried out. He still had a military bearing in his middle age. He must have been about 60 or so. Close cropped grey hair still graced the top of his head. His build was obviously that of a man who'd spent his life in the military and was proud to have done so. Somehow, his face showed both displeasure and love in the same expression.

Abby had rolled her eyes and shook off her apathy enough to come to Lynn's aid. Ashley was now sulking, lurking closer to the trees now. Mr. Williams took a knee by his youngest daughter, smiling at her. Explaining how proud he was to have a loving daughter that tried to help him by fixing the data pads, but how she needed to ask before toyed with other people's things. He patted her on the head and scooped up the remaining pieces of the ill-fated data pad. Then finally he made his way back to his oldest daughter.

Ashley's expression made it painfully clear that she felt ready to leave this part of her life behind. She had probably already talked to the local recruiters who were just waiting for her to be of age. She had her arms wrapped around her in a defensive posture as her father approached. As he approached, his affection for his daughter was evident. He placed his hand on her shoulder. She couldn't make out what he said but the conversation ended it a hug and kiss on the forehead. It was merely a glimpse into Ash's childhood, but it was enough to realize that she'd had amazing parents. This realization brought a frightening question to her mind.

Could she do this? She could barely remember her own parents. Honestly, when she closed her eyes it was harder to imagine the faces of her family than to see the batarians that had destroyed them.

"You'll be fine," Mrs. Williams said knowingly.

Kyler hadn't expected the sudden sound. "How did you know what I was thinking?"

Ashley's mother smiled. "One day, your own children will ask you the same thing. Come on. Let's go to the kitchen."

It was a very old fashioned kitchen, stove tops and all. Ash wasn't kidding when she said her parents were traditionalists. Mrs. Williams had been busy while Kyler was watching their home videos. She had thrown some oil in a pan and turned the burner on high. Soon the kitchen was filled with the loud sputtering sound.

"I know why you came. You're worried Ash won't be safe here. I wouldn't worry though. This message came in by hand today. It's from a friend of your, Emily Wong I believe?"

Kyler took the note, "Somehow the Alliance News Network keeps failing to fact check simple things like...passenger manifests. And we're normally so careful!"

It made sense. The non-chalant greeting. The insistence of old fashioned cooking, the sound of which would foil any audio bugs.

"No one knows he's here."

Mrs. Williams smiled, "If someone knows he exists and goes after him to get to you, they'll head to the wrong side of the galaxy. I'll keep a sharp eye on the vids. They should unwittingly tip us off."

"Yeah, I just wish we knew who "they" were right now," Kaidan said.

"You will. Now I hate to keep you waiting longer, but like I said, on the off chance someone is following you, let's give them a convincing show."

With that she handed out plates. She didn't keep them too much longer. She was trying to feed two biotics that had skipped dinner.

* * *

"Do you think we should knock?" Kaidan asked as they approached the ship.

"Why?"

"I don't know. What if they're... embracing eternity or something?"

Kyler slapped her husband on the back of his head. "I don't think they're that kind of 'friends.'"

Kaidan pretended to look stricken as he rubbed the back of his head.

Kyler still wasn't sure what she thought of Aleena. As a precaution, both Kyler and Kaidan pulled their weapons before they keyed the entrance to the ship. The door swished open.

There was no one there.

The two former Marines took a defensive posture and began to sweep the ship. Just then, the door to the back room opened and two figures strode out. Shepard whirled and aimed in. Then she dropped her weapon as she realized it was Wrex and Aleena and neither appeared to be in any distress, though Aleena appeared a bit weary. She looked sheepishly at Kaidan, who, showing great restraint, said nothing.

"You appear to have checked out early," Aleena was the first to say anything.

"We were attacked by the night nurse," Kyler responded.

"What? The friendly lady that escorted us out?" Aleena said wryly.

"Let's just say her bedside manner was lacking. She dropped this when I startled her." Kyler handed the medical device to Wrex. "We fought. She obviously wasn't well trained. And then she killed herself. Some kind of suicide device she had planted on her. I tried to get her to tell me who she worked for before she died. The only thing she got out was, "Sir."

"Maybe she was being respectful to the woman who had bested her?" Kaidan suggested.

"No. She only got out part of the word," Wrex interjected. "Shepard, we're dealing with Cerberus."

"Well this just gets better and better," Kaidan said to no on in particular.

"Where does she come in," Kyler asked as she gestured to Aleena.

"I've been employed by the Shadow Broker to figure out what it is they would want with the test subject. An entirely human organization completely dedicated to forwarding the interests of humans at the expense of other species decided to spare this krogan's life. A krogan that could be the savior of his race. It doesn't make sense."

"The Shadow Broker?" Kyler confirmed.

"Yes, speaking of which. We might not be in this mess had someone given the Shadow Broker those files on Cerberus some years back."

"Or we could be in an even worse mess depending on who the Shadow Broker sold that information to," Kyler retorted.

"Either way, I doubt the Shadow Broker would be very keen on my being involved with you. I'm endeavoring to keep our association a secret, so do try to avoid setting off any nukes, Shepard."

"Blow up one planet and everyone's a critic," Kaidan assessed as flailed his arms about.

Kyler quirked an eyebrow and stared at her husband. "Are you still medicated?"

"Maybe."

Kyler slapped her face and moved on with the conversation. "Wrex, are you sure she's legit," gesutring towards Aleena.

Wrex looked in his fellow mercernary's diection, "Yeah, I'm sure."

"So what's our next move?"

"I have some associates on Omega that might be able to help," Aleena explained.

"If you already have a lead then why even approach us?"

"They're not trustworthy associates," Wrex explained.

"How so?" Kyler inquired.

"They're batarians," Aleena said with a flat tone.


	10. Corner Piece

The smell. That was the first thing that hit Kyler. The overwhelming smell of Omega. Unwashed bodies, foreign produce, and various bodily liquids all intermingled in her nostrils. The former asteroid turned space station was crowded, dirty, and loud. It was the perfect place for anyone, including herself, to blend in. There was so much activity, so many different species. It was enough to put even a well trained operative on sensory overload. She hated to think about what kind of headaches Kaidan, with his outmoded L2 implants, would have later.

Kyler went over their course of action in her head. The plan was simple. Aleena would meet her contact as planned. Wrex would accompany her in the hopes that the mere sight of a Krogan Battlemaster would keep everyone in line. Shepard and Kaidan would break into the building from the rear and set themselves up to be guardian angels. If anything went wrong on the lower level of the garage where the meeting was to take place, Kaidan and Shepard would start picking off enemies from the high ground. Hopefully, it wouldn't come to that, but as an old earth general once said, "Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everyone you meet."

Kaidan kept checking their six as they made their way down the crowded streets. It had been cobbled together by so many different species and rebuilt so many times after fire fights and territory disputes that it was easy to get lost and wander down the wrong alley. Kyler was focused on leading them to the right building without getting corned in a dead end by someone who just felt like killing humans today.

They passed a group of surly looking turians. At first she paid them no notice, but something caught her eye. The pattern on one of their painted faces seemed familiar to her. Kyler couldn't get a good look at it as the turian was wearing a hood, but there was something so... Kyler quickly looked away. She realized who the face belonged to and didn't want to bring any undesired attention his way. She smiled to herself. She had no idea what the rest of those turians were up to, but rest assured, Garrus was about to get himself another collar. Small galaxy, she thought to herself.

"What are you looking at, human?" apparently she had not looked away quickly enough.

"Right now, you," she answered Garrus.

"I don't like the way you're looking at me." Garrus swept in closer, grabbed her, and whispered in her ear, "sorry about this." With that he threw her backwards into one of the many piles of trash that adorned the streets in Omega. Then he turned back to the laughing Turians, shoulder checking Kaidan as he passed.

Kyler watched them walk off and shook her head, smiling. Garrus still needed to work on his hand-to-hand. She'd taken a pretty fall for him. Kaidan walked over to help her up.

"Just another lovely day in the Terminus System," Kaidan remarked as the resumed their journey.

"Look on the bright side, lover. Nobody here wants to kill you for repelling their attack during the Skyllian Blitz."

"No, they'd just want to kill you. How is that the bright side?"

Kyler shrugged. "We're here."

Kaidan brought out his favorite new toy Wrex had brought for him. The proto-type omni tool didn't even have any manufacturing markings on it. Kyler barely had time to look around before Kaidan had the door hacked open.

"One of these days you're going to have to teach me how to do that," she commented.

"Kye..." Kaidan looked uncomfortable, "hacking both requires patience and finesse."

"And?"

"Nuked planet."

"Will everyone stop bringing that up. It wasn't even my idea," Kyler gestured in futility.

With that they crept into the building. They made their way easily through the abandoned building, encountering no resistance. This was by design of course. They took service corridors and ventilation shafts to their destination, a balcony overlooking the garage where the deal was to take place. They each found a concealed corner and hunkered down. This was fairly easy due to a number of empty cargo containers placed haphazardly on the floor. They kept a watchful eye out for batarians, knowing they may have a similar idea about controlling the high ground.

It wasn't long until they heard the sing-song lilt of Aleena's voice. "So Kralag, I see you brought friends. I'm surprised."

Three batarians walked in behind the leader, whom was apparently named Kralag.

"You don't think I would be stupid enough to come alone, do you asari?"

"No, I'm just surprised that you have friends to bring." One of Kralag's associates snickered at this.

"Quit with the jokes will you asari? Do you have my money?" Kralag demanded.

"Seems like no one enjoys good conversation anymore," Aleena observed wistfully. "And it's not your money until I confirm the information on the OSD you have for me."

Kralag pulled out a disk, dropped it on the floor, and kicked it over to Aleena.

She non-chalantly lifted the OSD bioticly, without bending over or taking her eyes off the batarians, and placed it into her omni-tool. Her eyes went wide as she scrolled down the read out.

"How did you get this information?"

"That wasn't part of the deal. Rest assured, it is accurate."

"You know the Shadow Broker would pay extra for that additional information."

"Yes, but the source of this particular information has, shall we say, assumed room temperature," The batarians snickered. Kaidan didn't want to think about how that unfortunate soul met his end. It was truly disgusting to him, how much grotesque pleasure the batarians seemed to take in causing pain. "However, as you've hinted to the fact that you're carrying, additional compensation, we'd gladly take it."

"I'm sure you would. However," Aleena tilted her head to the side in feigned contemplation, "I don't think you would take a biotic shove to the face quite so gladly."

Kralag eyed Wrex, cautiously. Kyler could see him doing the mental calculations, trying to figure out how many henchmen it would take to overcome a krogan.

By this point, both Kaidan and Kyler were on the alert and aiming in on their respective targets. Earlier they had been looking over their sites, taking in the whole situation and avoiding tunnel vision. (Nobody wants to get stabbed in the back while they are laying in the prone waiting to take their shot.) But now, the conversation had taken a decisive turn and neither of them liked the direction it was going.

Kyler breathed steadily, waiting for the batarians to make a move. She zoomed in several times on her target. The scopes on the rifles Wrex had provided were amazing. She could pick out every detail on Kralag's face. The blue sun tattoo over his eye, marking his mercenary affiliation, a ragged scar down the side of his face...

"Oh my God," Kyler breathed into her radio.

Kaidan, who heard the whisper over his radio, was suddenly very nervous. His wife was not one for hyperbole. An outburst from her, no matter how small, was an indicator of something significant.

"What is it?"

"The leader, Kralag. I gave him that scar."

"What? When?"

"The day he killed my family."

"Are you sure?"

"Dammit, yes! I'm sure. Do you think I could something like that?"

Down below the impasse seemed to have been resolved and both parties were retreating.

"Don't do it."

"Do what? Kill the murdering bastard?"

"And put our partners at risk."

"Wrex is a big boy. He can handle himself."

"Kyler, don't. Right now he's our only source of information. We need to find out who his contact was."

"You weren't there Kaidan. You don't understand."

"No I don't. But what I do understand is if you take that shot you're putting the mission in jeopardy."

There was silence over the radio.

"Kyler?"

Still silence.

"Kyler!" He whispered emphatically.

Finally, the rear doors of the building swished closed behind the last of the batarians leaving them alone in the abandoned building. Kaidan breathed a sigh of relief. He got up from his position and carefully made his way over to Kyler. She was leaning back on one of the cargo containers and breathing fast, her face completely drained of color. He reached out to hold her and found that she was shaking uncontrollably. He'd seen her in a lot of bad states, angry, despondent, and even fatalistic. But he'd never seen her panicked.

"Kye. Kye, look at me!"

"I should have killed him," she whispered.

"No. No. You did the right thing. If we can at least find out who his contact was, it could lead us to where they're keeping the krogan."

Kyler was understandably, inconsolable. She had begun rocking back in forth, in the fetal position. "He killed them. He killed them all. My father, Wes...He butchered them. My mother. He..my mother. I should have avenged them..."

"Shh..." Kaidan continued to hold her and make soothing sounds. It was all he really could do. What could he say? That it would be all right? That he understood? That hopefully Kralag wasn't off to do the same thing to some other family?

Kaidan had no idea how much time had passed until she was able to get control of herself. He didn't like staying in the dark, abandoned warehouse any longer than he had to, but his wife was in no condition to be wandering the streets of Omega.

When she was finally calm he whispered, "Come on, Kye. Let's go."

She nodded mutely and got up from her position. They retreated silently back out to the streets and made their way as quickly as possible to the shuttle. The walk gave Kyler time to recover herself almost completely.

Kaidan breathed a sigh of relief as Wrex's shuttle came into view. Kyler was the first one in the door. This time when it opened, a turian was standing there waiting for her.

Faster than he could react, Kyler had charged and threw him biotically against bulk head.

"Shepard, it's me. Garrus!"

"Oh I know. I was exacting my revenge. Do you have any idea what you threw me into?"

"You seemed amused by our chance encounter earlier."

"I don't think she's in the mood to be startled right now, Garrus," Kaidan warned.

"I'm fine," Kyler insisted.

"What took you two so long? Wrex and Aleena told me you supposed to be back some time ago. I was beginning to get worried." Garrus said righting himself.

"It was nothing," Kyler said firmly. "We just got a little turned around."

Garrus looked quizzically at the two humans, which for a turian meant cocking his head to the side and flaring his mandibles. "You, got lost?"

"No, but I obviously don't want to tell you what happened so let it be."

Under normal circumstances, Garrus would have made a comment on the human race's seeming inability to say what they actually meant. However, with his friend so obviously distraught, he let the moment pass unmarked.

Kyler pushed the conversation forward. "How'd you find us?"

"Well, when I saw you heading in one direction and Wrex heading back from that direction, I found it hard to be a coincidence. I followed him back to the shuttle."

"So what happened to those other turians you were with?"

"Locked in a volus vendor's refrigerator until such a time the Council can send a larger task force to pick them up or I feel like letting them out."

Kyler let out a muffled laugh despite herself. Garrus looked please to have lightened his friend's mood. He opened his mandibles in a wide alien smile.

"I was going to take them in my self, but when I realized that you were here and that our cases were connected," Garrus paused for dramatic effect, "I decided my talents could be better used elsewhere." He nodded in the direction of Kyler.

"Great, now all we need is T'soni and the quarian and it will be one big happy reunion," interjected Wrex.

Garrus looked confused, the sarcasm lost on him. "Will they be joining us?"

"How are the missions connected," Kaidan prodded Garrus. The new information was giving Kyler something else to focus on. Right now, that's what she needed.

"The council noticed that the shipping/receiving manifests for weapons delivered to C-Sec were not matching up. Things were, as you say, 'falling on the back of the truck?'"

"Off. Falling off the back of the truck," Kaidan corrected.

"Very well. Off the back of the truck. I was sent to find out where our missing weapons were headed. Those frosty turians were illegal arms dealers. They had been providing weapons to numerous fractions within the Terminous Systems, including batarian slavers."

Okay, maybe this wasn't what Kyler needed, Kaidan thought to himself while rubbing his temples.

Garrus continued, "I had infiltrated their ring in order to gain information on how they were getting the weapons and where exactly the weapons were going. That's when I started monitoring Kralag's 'activies.'"

Kyler shuddered at the mention of the batarian's name, but no one besides Kaidan seemed to notice.

"Needless to say they were less than tasteful. However, I believe I have some information that will be of great use to you.

"I know who his, 'contact' is er... was. The man was an agent for Cereberus. He was looking to hire some henchmen for another operation and apparently got more than he bargained for. The batarians apparently...never mind. I don't think anyone here wants to know what they were doing to that poor soul. He eventually told Kralag everything he knew about every operation he was involved in. I think he was trying to get Kralag to hurry up and kill him. That's how Kralag found out about the information on the disk. Since the human was dead, I decided to go looking for his shuttle. It's not as if public transports land on Omega as part of a regularly scheduled route. I found it and by rebuilding his navigation logs I've surmised several areas of interest."

"Well if this information is accurate, you'd better narrow that down to an area of interest," Aleena informed him.

"Why? What was on the disk?" Kaidan asked. Apparently, he and his wife needed to be brought up to speed.

For the first time since she'd joined this merry little crew, Aleena didn't have a flippant, disdaining answer. She looked almost... shaken. "They're attempting to make a more perfect genophage, possibly trans-species. That's why they took the child alive. For now, its more useful to them like that, for testing purposes."

"That's sick," Kaidan's face distorted in disgust.

"And dangerous," Garrus added. "Who knows what they might accidentally create while attempting to manipulate the original virus."

"Garrus, do you think could narrow down the search for us?" Kyler asked.

"Shepard, I'm a SPECTRE. I can get you what Councilman Anderson had for breakfast last Tuesday if you want. I'll head back to the Citadel. I'll need a more powerful computer to finish rebuilding the logs and extrapolating where that shuttle's been. I'll also try to rebuild the comm logs, or at least see if there are any transmissions still hanging around the extranet. If people had any idea how unsecure their information was..."

"What about your turians you left chilling?" Kaidan asked.

"Oh, I'm sure that Coucil task force will be here by tomorrow. Aleena, it was a pleasure to meet you. Wrex, Kaidan, good to see you again, as always. Commander," he turned to Kyler, "I wish this could repay you for all the things you've done for me."

"Garrus," she said putting a hand on his shoulder. "I've never done anything for you that you didn't deserve."

His mandibles flared wide once more and with that he turned to leave. Wrex and Aleena had decided it was time to get off this asteroid before they attracted any trouble and headed to the pilot and co-pilot seats, leaving Kaidan and Kyler to go catch some z's in the back room.

Kyler dropped her armor wordlessly and flopped into bed.

Kaidan was more meticulous in removing his gear, first picking hers up and placing to the side. "K, don't you think we should talk about this?"

"No," came her reply.

"I really think..."

"NO!"

"Alright," he conceded. "But if you change your mind, I'm here."

* * *

The light from the transmission flickered against the Illusive man's face.

"Are you sure it was her?" he asked.

"Yes," Kralag answered.

"In that case we're going to need some insurance."

"What did you have in mind?"

"Oh, nothing for you. This will be handled by someone else. I need someone who's tactics are more...subtle."


	11. Footsteps

Abby Williams was laying on the couch reading one of her beloved paper books when her sister, Lynn Williams, walked in from practice still dressed in kendo garb. After a cursory greeting, her sister headed strait into the kitchen for a glass of water.

Despite the technology that would have allowed her to simply download any reading selection to a small, convenient data pad, Abby still preferred the weight and feel of an actual book in her hands. That is precisely why her entire apartment was lined in book shelves of various types and sizes.

She was still reading her book when a loud crash came from the corner of the living room. Lynn came rushing into the space just in time to see Ash Alenko pulling a stack of books onto himself. She immediately set to remove him from the wreckage of academia but by the time she made her way to the toppled book shelf, he'd given his head a good shake to clear the senses and crawled away to find other adventures with a smile on his face.

"Well he get's that from his mother," she said to herself. Then to her sister she continued, "Abby, one who cannot move forward will never get anywhere."

Abby peered at her sister from behind her book, "What on earth is that supposed to mean?"

"It means you could store all of these books on one data pad."

"Then why didn't you just say, 'Hey Abby, I bet you could store all of these books on one data pad?' Honestly Lynn, I thought majoring in ancient literature would make you appreciate books in their traditional format. Apparently, all it did was further rob you of your ability to speak plain English."

Lynn rolled her eyes in an exaggerated manner and picked up Ash who had just fallen over himself yet again. The boy seemed indignant to the fact that someone had deigned it necessary help him with his forward motion. He squirmed in her hold. "Come on little fellow. Let us travel to my abode."

Ash continued to squirm. Lynn made an absurd attempt to sooth the child's offended sensibilities. "I know you possess a daring soul little one. You would most assuredly crawl all the way to my apartment unaided if I allowed you, but somehow I doubt your parents would appreciate my tolerance of such audacious behavior at this juncture."

Ash responded by redoubling his efforts to escape Lynn's hold. Abby snickered. "I wonder if that's what the great CDR Shepard was like as a little girl, refusing to be helped or held back by anyone."

"Hmm...no..." Lynn conjectured aloud. "Shepard appreciates the team. Somehow I envision her giving stirring speeches about how all the toddlers in her daycare have to 'work together for the common good' and 'that only together can we reach that cookie jar on the second shelf!'" Lynn stepped up on the coffee table with one leg in a heroic pose and made a dramatic flourish with her free hand, acting out the scene as she described it.

Abby blurted out a short, barking laugh as she envisioned the surreal image of a miniature Shepard dressed in tiny colossus armor waving a squirt gun over head. "I don't know, sis. On second thought, he looks a lot more like Kaidan to me."

"This is true. Alas, red hair, blue eyes...her genes never had a chance," Lynn said wistfully.

Abby closed her book and sat up, "Oh, believe me, there is plenty of the first human specter in that kid. I put him on the ground to let him crawl around and the first things he goes for is that old pistol dad made me train on."

Instead of smiling at her sister's tale, Lynn's face dropped as her gaze fell to their father's old service pistol. The pistol wasn't just a weapon. It was Abby's treasured memento of their dead father who had insisted that each of his girls know how to defend themselves in his absence. Being an Alliance Marine he couldn't always be there to watch over his family, but he was going to be damn sure no harm ever came to them in his absence. Despite, her protests, their father had forced Abby to train, albeit half heartedly, on that very pistol.

But their father had been dead a long while of natural causes, and Abby couldn't understand her sister's sudden sadness. It was true that of all the Williams, Lynn was the most lead by her emotions, which were mercurial even by female standards. But this was an extravagant and abrupt change in disposition, even for her. Confused, Abby inquired as to her sister's altered mood. "What is it?"

"It would seem that he emulates his namesake as well."

Abby understood. She placed a hand reassuringly on her sister's shoulder. "Naw, if he was like Ashley, he would have been looking for some heavier fire power, like a machine gun, or grenades," Abby said with a lopsided smile, trying to cheer her sister. Lynn responded to the attempt with a half hearted smile of her own. Ash, oblivious to the moment, continued to wave his arms wildly in an attempt to regain his freedom. In all his thrashing, he backhanded Lynn in the nose.

"Okay, now that's Ashley," Abby laughed.

"I'm so glad you're amused," Lynn said nasally as she rubbed the offended appendage, but she smiled in spite of herself.

Ash didn't understand the context, but he realized that he had made the women laugh, and smiled as he began thrashing all the more exuberantly.

Abby composed herself enough to inform her sister, "Mom said she'd be back with Sarah at six, so you only really have to watch him for an hour or so."

Shaken out of her reverie Lynn responded, "I wonder what precipitated mother's sudden need to be alone with her youngest daughter."

Abby shrugged her shoulders. "Don't know," she said as she closed the door. Once she was alone, Abby laughed to herself.

"Oh, Ash. You're going to need to watch after that kid. He is a lot like you."

* * *

Sarah stared down at her partially eaten plate of food. The remains of a club sandwich and fries still cluttered the dish. Her dark hair fell down in her face as she contemplated her next sentence. The breeze picked up at their outdoor table and carried with it the pleasant sent of the sea. The salty air danced through Sarah's wayward bangs causing it's feathery ends to obscure her pensive brown eyes. Normally, this place, her favorite table at her favorite restaurant, made her feel content and at ease. Now, the sea air merely reminded her of the recurring dream that had plagued her sleep.

"Mom, there's something I have to tell you," she began.

"That you've signed a contract with the Alliance military and that you are leaving for OCS tomorrow?"

Sarah was dumbfounded. "How...?"

The elder Williams smiled a knowing smile and simply said, "Mothers know these things."

"You're not angry?"

"Sarah, I've been around the military long enough to know this simple truth. Military brats either run as far away from the service as they can or right back to it. There's no middle ground. I knew some of my children would want the same life their father had and that some would reject it out of hand. Although, I would have never guessed you would join."

"Mother, you know I'm more than capable of defending yourself."

"Oh, I'm aware. As are most of the people in the colony after your little...incident. But I am just as aware that unlike your sister, you don't enjoy the fight. It's your last option, not your first choice. I hope you don't feel that you owe this to her, to her memory."

"No mother. This is something I need to do for me," Sarah lied. Somehow, in her heart of hearts, she know her mother sensed the falsehood.

Rather than pursuing it, her mother decided it was time to alter the tone of the conversation and smiled at her daughter. "Well, I hope you'll be putting that engineering degree I paid for to good work."

"Mom, I had a scholarship. You didn't pay for a dime."

"I'm not talking about your tuition, sweetheart. I'm talking about all the various electronic devices of ours that you've disassembled over the years."

"Hey," Sarah said in mock offense. "Most of those devices made their way back together. Just not my first power scooter, or dad's laser welder, or..." Sarah tilted her head and gave the accusation some thought. "Okay, all my experiments might have added up to a full ride at the university."

Sarah's mother laughed at this and reached out to stroke her daughter's cheek. "I'm going to miss moments like this, little one. Be careful, please. For me."

"Mom, I'm going to be an engineer. What's the worst that could happen?"

"Please, Sarah. Don't ask me that."


	12. Home Again

Well, we couldn't keep dancing on rainbows with unicorns forever. In all seriousness, this chapter is very sad. Be warned.

The two dominant aspects of Kyler's personality were at war with each other as she watched her target through the scope of her rifle.

On the one hand, she always completed the mission, no matter what. Her time as an N7 had ingrained that imperative into her makeup some years ago. There was no room for failure as an N7. The mission came first. It always came first. Everything else came second. And in this case, the mission required that Kralag stayed alive... for now.

On the other hand, Kyler was deeply loyal to her friends and family. She would protect them at all costs, even that of her life. And here before her, was the man that destroyed every friend, every family member, every semblance of normalcy in her young adult life. She could drop him, right here, right now. She had the power to ensure that he never hurt anyone else again.

Kyler did not suffer indecision very often in her life. Generally, she did what was right, because it was right and life was as simple as that. But right now, for the first time in a long time, she was at a loss.

She felt her finger start to squeeze on instinct. Slowly, she took the slack out of the trigger. She watched the cross hairs go up as she took a deep breath and settle back down to her target as she exhaled. It was close now. The weapon hovered precariously between firing and not firing. Kralag continued to make his way to the back of the garage. He was moments from safety. A few more steps and the automatic doors would close behind him and Kyler would lose the shot.

And then he was gone.

Kyler slammed her fist into the ground and unleashed a pained howl of frustration. She tossed her self on against one of the empty containers, letting it take her weight as she slumped against it. An inexorable torrent of pain and loss came crashing down on her and for the first time and a long time, she didn't push it back. She didn't hide it or put it aside for another time. Kyler let the pain wash over her anew.

Where the hell did the universe get off? He eyes screamed wordlessly at the ceiling. Serving up that childhood monster on a silver platter and refusing to let her kill it. Instead it taunted her with the tantalizing prospect of closure for past wounds. The whole situation reminded her of a perverse game of wack-a-mole.

A shuffling sound from the other side of the balcony interrupted her thoughts. Kaidan must have heard the noise and would be coming over to see what was wrong. She looked to the direction of the sound.

It wasn't Kaidan.

"Wes?" She asked incredulously.

Wes had been Kyler's older brother, right up until the day the batarians brutally murdered him. Knowledge of his death was what most likely precipitated Kyler's dubious greeting.

Generally, Kyler tried to never think about her big brother. His death had been such a waste of what was a promising young man. He was only 18 years old when the slavers took her big brother from her.

But the passage of years and sheer force of will was not enough to erase his indelible visage from her mind. Wes was a part of her life for 16 years and would not fade quietly into the recesses of forgotten memory. And why should he have to? He was a great big brother; they had been immune to the typical sibling spats other families seemed to suffer.

Try as she might, when she closed her eyes she could see his shaggy red hair splashing into his bright, blue eyes; eyes that had darted intelligently to and fro inside his freckled face. She'd recall his ever ready smile and the way it made her feel even on her worst days or what passed for her worst days back then. "No worries, little one." He'd always say much to her annoyance. Wes had towered over her at 6'7". He'd had a heart and a personality as large as his frame. A light hearted air hung about him as well as the smell of lubricants and machine fluids. He was something of the colony Mr. Fix-It. Years of fixing generators and building new habs on the colony had given him a strong, lean build. He had been the picture of youthful health. Sinewy muscle covered his entire body. But the apparition in front of her wasn't the Wes she remembered from her childhood.

Now, his once bright eyes were gray and dead. Blood loss had drained all the color from his face. Scanning him over she was terrified to see he had a vicious cut down his abdomen.. He shuffled along the balcony, desperately clutching his gut, trying to keep his organs in their rightful place. His wounds oozed dark red blood. With each step forward, more of it slid through his fingers. As he approached the shuffling sound was accompanied by a rhythmic crunching. Looking down Kyler could see her brother had a complex fracture in his right leg. The bone was sliding in and out of the skin as he approached her. In the distance, she could hear the greedy barking of the varren, who had smelled the carrion and were searching for their feast.

"Kylie..." he heaved. With that he slipped on the growing puddle of organic tissue he was leaking. The broken leg gave way with a sickening snap. His head landed inches from her.

Futilely, Kyler reached for her medi-gel pack and tried to help he brother. Panic made her hands shake. Over and over again she dropped the med kit and fumbled with the bandages. From behind her, she hear a woman's scream of naked terror. Her brother tried to speak. He got out more blood than words. "They're in the house. They have mom." With that he died in her arms.

Kyler turned to run towards the screams and came face to face with Kralag. He must have doubled back, she thought to herself as he grabbed her and threw her face down to the floor. She grunted in pain as she felt him land knee first on her spine, pinning her to the ground. He gave a sickening cackle as he started to jam a slave jack into the back of her neck...

Kyler awoke with a sharp intake of air. Her clothes and sheets were inundated with sweat from her fitful night of sleep.

A sickening weakness permeated her body. Her limbs shook uncontrollably. She looked up at the ceiling and leaned back in an effort to keep the rising bile down. She failed.

Thrusting forward she emptied her stomach contents to the side of the bunk where she had been 'sleeping.' The shadows of her dream still clung to her consciousness, blurring her reality and her nightmare. Before regaining lucidity, she mistook the calming hands of her lover for the grasp of a slaver. Kaidan barely deflected her strike in time.

"Kye!"

The familiar voice of Kaidan called to her from beyond the nightmare. Once he brain could establish the place and time, her body began to stand down. Her eyes refocused in the dark to look upon the concerned face of her husband. Once sure of who it was in the room with her, Kyler clung to him as if she would be sucked out the airlock if she let go.

"Kye, it's okay, I'm here. You're safe."

The door wooshed open but very little light from the outside cabin made it past Wrex's enormous frame.

"You two all right in here? Sounded like an assassin might have stowed away or something. You need me to airlock a body?"

Kaidan gave the battlemaster a look that said 'I'll explain later' and Wrex made his way out.

"Kye? Kye, look at me."

She wasn't paying attention to him. She was absent mindedly fingering the jack for her biotic amp at the back of her neck. Kaidan was desperately searching for a way to start the conversation he knew they had to have.

"Is your implant bothering you?"

"It covers the scar."

"It covers what scar?"

"Kralag. He... he tried to put a slave jack in my head... without anesthesia."

Every protective instinct Kaidan went to overdrive, but he muffled his anger. He knew it wouldn't help her right now. It would only make it harder for her to get out what she had to say.

"What happened?"

"I wasn't there."

"Weren't where, Kye?" Deciding not to question the lack of segue.

"I wasn't home when the attack started. I was out in this...this is stupid."

"No, it's not. Look, all these years I've known you, I've never pushed, never pried. I accepted the fact that there were certain things about your past that I just might never know. But right now, your past isn't just affecting you. It's affecting all of us."

"I know that!" She snapped. Then more quietly, "But it's hard."

Kaidan wrapped his arm around his wife and said gently, "You helped me with my demoms, Kye. It's high time I returned the favor," he said before kissing her gently on the forehead.

Encouraged, Kyler started her story, "I used to go to this place when I was younger. There was this old fat tree with low branches, overlooking a lake bed. It was during the rainy season that day, so it was filled with water. I used to go out there to think, to be alone, look up at the night sky, to mope when I became a teenager..."

Kaidan smiled at the idea of a moody, reticent, teenage Shepard. "Sounds nice."

"Hmm...it was," she remembered fondly for a moment. "It was a little out of the way too," her face was down cast once more. "That's probably why I survived the raiders attack."

Kyler fell silent for a few minutes. She wrung her hands absentmindedly. Kaidan waited patiently for her to continue.

"That day I'd gone out there just to get away from the hab. I was almost home when I heard the varren.

"I'd had no idea what they were back then. I thought they were just stray dogs. The colony was full of them. It was one of the great colony mysteries, how did so many stray dogs get here from earth. I used to feed them, leave water out for them. Drove my mother nuts. She was convinced one of them was going to bite me and wasn't thrilled about me wasting our water either," she said with facial gesture that was only vaguely reminiscent of her usual lopsided smile. Kaidan allowed himself to return a small smile of his own. It wasn't often he got glimpses this far into her past.

Kyler steadied her self to continue her story. "But, when I got closer to the house, I could tell these weren't human dogs. I could also tell they were...they were eating something."

Kyler stopped. When it became evident that she would not continue, Kaidan prodded, "What did you see?"

"I...I had a brother, Kaidan. His name was Wes. He was a couple years older and looked a lot like me. He was very light-hearted, very smart. He was always helping people. I don't think there was a soul in this universe that didn't like him. The batarians killed him and left their varren to fight over the body."

Kaidan thought he might throw up, but he struggled to keep his facial expression neutral.

"I snapped. I had ran blindly into the pack swinging nothing but my fists. I didn't put it together until later, but that was the day I found out I was a biotic. I had no training, no amp... I just noticed that the animals went flying much further than they should have and chalked it up to adrenalin.

Hell of a day. Kaidan thought to himself. Most people remember exactly where they were, what they were doing, and what they were feeling the day they found out they were biotic. It's the kind of revelation that changes a person's life forever. The fact that she didn't even notice started to put her trauma into perspective for him.

"I still had no idea what was happening. I ran for the house screaming for my mother. She never answered. I raced from door to door until I found her in the bedroom, one of those slave jacks halfway inserted into the back of her neck. Something had gone horribly wrong with the procedure, as if there was anything right about it in the first place. I don't even know if she was dead yet, but I had to get out of the room. Her eyes...Her eyes were flicking back in forth in her head, like she was some kind of broken machine. I ran back to the kitchen and threw up.

"I was still on my knees over the trash can when Kralag hit me on the back of the head and sent me sprawling. I was woozy but still conscious. He tried to jam that thing in to the back of my head but I was jerking around enough that he missed. It was close," she said rubbing the back of her neck, "but he missed the brain stem.

While he was trying to reload the mechanism I grasped for anything I could find to use as a weapon. My fingers finally found something. My brother was meticulous about putting his tools away. He did a lot of engineering work around the colony and never wanted to be caught without the proper equipment. But somehow, that day, his toolbox was left open on the floor. It was like he placed it there from beyond the grave. Would be just like Wes, always playing the role big brother, always taking care of me, even in death.

I grabbed a laser welder and slammed it on it's end where the activation switch was and pointed haphazardly behind me. I hit him. I didn't kill him, but I convinced him I wasn't worth the fight. He held his face in his hands as I chased him out the door with my brother's tool. When he was gone I just...sat there and cried until the rescuers came. I didn't even realize my neck was bleeding. They found me passed out on the floor."

Kaidan asked the question in spite of himself, "What happened to your father?"

Kyler looked up at him, "I don't know. Somehow, I don't think I want to know."

Kaidan held his wife in silence for a long while. Then softly, he spoke, "Do you want me to tell them?"

"No, I'll do it," she said flatly. I just...I wish..."

"What?"

"I wish I had known Garrus already had all the answers. I wish I had taken the shot."

"For vengeance?"

"I'd like to say it's completely altruistic, protecting others, but between you and me, I'll admit that I would like to watch him eaten by his own varren. And now? Who knows if I'll ever get another chance."

Kaidan stared into the darkness, as if somewhere, just beyond the limits of his vision, was the right response to what his wife had just said.

* * *

"I appreciate your restraint, Shepard," Aleena said with genuine surprise. "I doubt I would have been able to control myself were I faced with my family's murderer, even if it would have put others in danger."

"I am my family's murderer," Wrex mumbled mostly to himself.

"Well, we can't all be as dysfunctional as you Wrex," Aleena chastised.

Wrex grunted in response. "Shepard, if you want to leave, go take your vengeance on that bastard, you'd be well within your rights. Hell, you took time out from saving the galaxy to help me get some outdated armor back for my family."

"No," she said decisively. She was not about to show the same weakness she had earlier alone with Kaidan. "This is more important. I just thought you should be aware should we run into him again."

"I'll try to leave him for you if there's a firefight," Wrex offered.

"Wrex," Kyler said. "If you ever get the opportunity to take Kralag out, you do it. You do it fast and without a moments hesitation."

"Whatever you say, Shepard."

At this point there was awkward silence until an incoming transmission announced its arrival with a series of flashing lights and beeps on the forward console. Aleena gracefully tapped in the command to accept the connection.

Garrus' avian feature filled the vid screen. "I have good news," he said without preamble.

"Do you know where they're keeping the krogan?" Kaidan asked.

"I have a fairly good idea, yes."

"Where?"

"Feeling nostalgic for home, Alenko?"

"Torox?"

"No, Earth."

"Wait for her to come to you. Take her on Luna." The Illusive man gave his orders in a terse fashion.

"As you wish, Sir," came the response from the terminal.

Yeah, this chapter was done a week ago and I just couldn't find the time to refine it. XBOX Live is the DEVIL! THE DEVIL!

Oh, question for the reviewers: (I love you guys btw.) I really pulled my punch on this chapter. It was originally more graphic. More violence, more detail. Anyhow, I decided I didn't want to have to put an M rating on it. Fine as is? Or do you think it lost something? (I realize this is hard to say without comparing it to the original but I saved all over it. Whoops.)

**Edit: I realize now that apparently Shepards family died by IDF. Alas, playing paragon all the time I was unaware of this fact. But you know what? I DON'T CARE! Take that cannon. And that! *Continues to kick poor cannon who's laying on the floor in the fetal position.***


	13. Boot Camp

Sarah was the only officer candidate not straining herself as she stood at attention around the sparring pit. She found it amusing that the other men and women around her looked as if they might sprain something. All the drill instructors had asked for was for them to stand up strait with their shoulders back and their feet at a 45 degree angle. However, from the look of things, most of the candidates present decided that if they didn't look pained they weren't doing it right.

Unfortunately for Sarah, this thought brought a smile to her face at precisely the wrong moment.

"You must be out of your fraking mind, Williams! What? Do you think because your sister saved the galaxy that you're special? Everyone else has to stand at attention and look strait ahead, but not you. YOU rate smiling like an idiot? Is that it?" SSgt Cassidy looked as if he might have an aneurysm if he yelled any louder.

It wasn't fair. Sarah couldn't help what family she was born into. She also didn't appreciate the drill instructors bringing up her dead sister every chance they got. She took some solace in the fact that it wasn't just her being harassed for standing out. The drill instructors latched onto any slight aberrance in any candidate and harangued them with it until they broke. The candidate might not have even done anything to warrant the special attention. Some of them were related to famous military officials. Some of them had funny names. A few brought the extra attention down on themselves by failing to blend in. Whatever it was, the drill instructors beat the candidate down with their new favorite blunt object until they brook.

But Sarah wasn't about to give them the satisfaction of breaking her. She knew the game. Look strait ahead. Yell out a default response. Not to mention, as her DIs so kindly continued to point out, she had a reputation to live up to. She wasn't about to have the family reputation Ash bought with her life get thrown back into the mud because her DIs were mean to her.

"Sir, no sir!" She gave the standard response.

"Maybe you shouldn't even have to go to boot camp. Maybe we should give you an award, too. We'll call it, the Medal of Nepotism."

"Sir, no sir!"

"Then what are you smiling about, Williams? Hmmm... Do you think I'm funny? Do I amuse you, Williams?"

"Sir, no sir!" She was riding the storm out with standard responses. She knew he wanted a rise out of her, but he wasn't going to get it.

"Oh so I'm not funny? Well, I think I'm fraking hilarious. You know what would be funny to me? Watching you step into the ring with our martial arts instructor, Sgt Claxton here. THAT, should be hilarious."

"Sir, aye aye, sir!"

Sarah glided forward. She knew the way she moved annoyed the drill instructors. Everyone else clunked around, thinking slamming their feet into the ground made them march in a more professional, more military manner. Sarah moved exactly in the manner dictated by the instructors, but it was smooth and graceful with no wasted motion.

She entered the ring and stood on the opposite side of Sgt Claxton, a muscle bound man whose shoulders looked almost as wide as he was tall. SSgt Cassidy blew a whistle to start the fight. Sarah didn't move.

She knew the drill instructors expected her to make a display of her motivation by rushing blindly into her opponent as hard as she could as soon as the whistle sounded. She knew that they would disapprove of her waiting for the sergeant to make the first move.

Ashley would have. She would have come in full force and knocked her opponent of balance. Then she would seize the advantage, exploiting the weakness she just created in her enemy. She wouldn't come strait at him either. She would change directions at the last second. She would fight hard and dirty, grabbing anything nearby to use as a makeshift weapon. It was by no stretch of the imagination that Sarah could visualize her sister grabbing the SSgt's whistle and choking out Sgt Claxton with it. "I don't want a fair fight," Ash would say. "I want to win." To a civilian that would sound dishonorable, but to a Marine it was smart. Is it fair to drop bombs on entrenched infantry? Is it fair to shoot an enemy who only has a knife? Only an idiot or a ribbon chaser degrades his combat power to make the fight fair. Who would ever send a Marine, more importantly a life, where you can send a bullet?

Anyhow, Ash's rough and tumble style always caused her to expend a lot of energy, but it was a style that had worked for her.

But Sarah wasn't Ashley. She waited.

Sgt Claxton was in no uncertain terms, pissed. "Candidate you get your ass over here and fight or I'll make you wish you had."

She stood, silently relaxed, every muscle on the cusp of firing, but none straining unnecessarily.

"Candidate! You have ten seconds."

He started to walk over.

"Ten...nine...five...one..." he said skipping numbers. He intended to lay hands on her as he said one, but despite the accelerated countdown, by the time he finished she wasn't there.

Later, when the drill instructors watched the video of the incident, they would have to slow the speed of the playback in order to prove that Officer Candidate Sarah Williams did not in fact, much to the chagrin of jealous electrons, make a quantum leap from in front of the sergeant to his rear.

However, in real time, it was if she was never there. Sgt Claxton's hands swiped air and then he was on the ground, Sarah standing behind him. She didn't smirk. She didn't gloat. She simply stood, which was more than could be said for the fallen instructor.

"Seize the advantage," SSgt Cassidy yelled.

"He's down, Sir" she replied simply while turning towards the SSgt.

At that moment the 'downed' opponent exploited Sarah's temporary distraction by hooking her ankle and bringing her to the ground. This was not Sarah's comfort zone. Generally, she was fast enough and agile enough to put her opponent on the ground without ending up there herself. She needed to get to her feet and end this decisively. Decisively apparently not being a knock down or forcing him out of the ring. She thought to herself. Well if he wants to be knocked unconscious...

However, getting to her feet was going to be difficult as the sgt now had her in side control. Wrestling wasn't her strong suit. Redirecting opponents' momentum and joint manipulation was where she flourished. The sgt probably would have bested her and regained a small measure of the respect he'd lost earlier in the match had he not made one fatal mistake.

Instead of trying to finish the fight, the sergeant adjusted his hold so that he could whisper in Sarah's ear.

"You're just as pathetic as your sister. I knew her you know. She was a horrible soldier and Shepard should have never taken her on a mission that important. She's dead because she was incompetent and got in over her head."

For weeks, the drill instructors had been trying to get Sarah to yell at the top of her lungs, to look and sound intimidating. They wanted her to give them give a decent "war cry." That day, they finally got one.

Nobody saw the reversal until they watched the video replay during the investigation. All they knew at the time, was that suddenly the even-tempered and placid candidate Sarah Williams had Sgt Claxton mounted and was pummeling his face with her fists. She was uncharacteristically wild, swinging her arms back and forth, screaming every epithet spoken in galactic at the top of her lungs, tears streaming down her face.

"My sister was twice the soldier you are you son of a bitch..."

If the scene hadn't been so shocking, the other drill instructors might not have froze. They also might have intervened in time to save Sgt Claxton from a trip to the hospital. The play back came to an end as the other drill instructors pried Sarah off her opponent and placed the unconscious sgt onto a stretcher.

"What do you have to say for yourself, candidate?" The captain asked at the end of the replay. He hadn't given his name and Sarah was not about to ask.

"I am sorry the sgt spent the night in sick bay, Sir." Sarah didn't have to fake sincerity. She was genuinely sorry to have hurt someone, despite how he might have provoked her. The fight had been an out of body experience for Sarah and had left her in a state of denial. Had she not watch the video records she might not believed she was capable of behaving in such a manner.

The captain pondered this for what seemed like an eternity. Sarah braced herself to get kicked out of the Alliance before she ever really joined.

"I'm not," he said.

"What?" She asked in a voice pitched two octaves higher than normal. Then she belatedly added, "Sir."

"What he did was out of line, but it showed me you had enormous potential. Walk with me, Williams."

She did an about face to follow him out the door. He put his arm around her and said, "At ease. At ease. Williams, you don't meet the typical pysch profile of our recruits, but that's not a bad thing. Someone who keeps their head about them, even in an environment like this," he gestured to the chaos around them, DIs yelling at scrambling recruits, blank fire going off, cadences being bellowed... "Someone who keeps calm and does not blindly fall in line. Not to mention someone with your innate fighting ability, is exactly what I am here to look for. I see here your recruitment contract has you down for an engineering military occupational specialty."

"Yes, sir."

"Have you given any thought to becoming an N1 instead?"

"Sir?"

"Look. I can pull some strings to change your follow on school. I think you would be a great edition to our special forces. Besides, your record here says that you graduated the top of your class from a prestigious engineering school. What more are you going to learn from a basic Alliance engineering course? How to turn your omni-tool on 101?"

"I don't know..." she trailed off while her mind wandered back to her last conversation with her mother. Mom, I'm going to be an engineer. What could possibly happen?

"Sir, I really don't think this is my calling," she slipped. Oops. She thought to herself.

"Calling? Oh, you're one of those."

"Yes, sir. My entire family believes."

"Hmmm..." he gave this new piece of information some thought. "You believe in and all-knowing, all-powerful God of the universe, right?"

"Yes, sir."

"This God who had you, and I quote your liturgy, 'perfectly and wonderfully' made."

"Yes, sir."

"Seems to me he wouldn't have bothered with giving you such amazing fighting ability if he didn't want you to use it to protect the innocent. Keep them safe from batarian slavers, rogue geth, and Heaven only knows what else."

"The same could be said of my talent with fixing machines. I could help keep colonies alive by sustaining their vital technology."

"Which is also a skill we look for. We take those people and turn them into Infiltrators."

"Huh."

"Tell you what. Let's see how you do when your company starts zero g combat training next week and we'll talk about this again."

"Sounds like a plan, sir."

"Dismissed, candidate."

"Aye, sir."

"Oh and Williams."

"Yes, Sir?" Sarah turned back to face her superior.

"I knew your sister, too. I knew her when she was my platoon sergeant back in my days in the infantry. I knew her when she put a then Corporal Claxton on report for being UA and caused him to miss his first opportunity for promotion to sergeant. Looks like her baby sister will be responsible for making him a corporal again. That boy needs to learn not to mess with the Williams women." The captain smiled and turned away leaving a very pleased candidate behind him.

With that Sarah started back to the squad bay where her DIs were undoubtedly berating her fellow candidate for not doing some mundane task inhumanly fast. Typically a candidate would never be left alone. They would be escorted everywhere, but the captain had insisted on speaking to her alone and apparently SSgt Cassidy had not sent another DI to come pick her up.

Oh, well. She thought to herself. She knew her way back.

So Sarah was alone and distracted, her brain mulling over the captain's offer while her feet took care of taking of moving her forward, when somebody pistol whipped her in the back of the head. She fell back into his arms with a muffled, "ompf..."

* * *

"You are so lucky," SSgt Cassidy said.

"Lucky? This bitch gave me a concussion," Sgt Claxton replied irritably adjusting Sarah's dead weight in his arms.

"You're fault. I set you up perfectly. You were supposed to knock her out so that we could take her from medical unconscious. How was I supposed to know you'd let a little girl kick your ass."

"Shut up and get the door."

SSgt Cassidy smirked as he hit the shuttle's door controls.

"What is our story going to be now?" Sgt Claxton asked.

"Easy, Williams got kicked out for her outburst and you're still recovering from your ass kicking at the hands of a girl half your size. So everything's still plausible," SSgt Cassidy laughed at his own joke.

Sgt Claxton's profane grumbling was overpowered by the sound of the shuttle's door closing.


	14. Collision Course

Kaidan gently swept an errant hair from his sleeping wife's face. She was sleeping peacefully for once, her head against his chest, surrounded by the safety of Kaidan's arms. He was thankful that Aleena was as perceptive as she was. After their previous conversation regarding Kyler's past, the asari gave him a meaningful look before volunteering both Wrex and herself for another shift piloting the shuttle on its way to earth. Wrex protested but Aleena insisted that there was something she wanted to discuss with him in private and that she didn't want him falling asleep on her.

This mercifully allowed Kyler to get some actual sleep for the first time since Kaidan had woke up in a hospital. Kaidan ached to lean down and kiss Kyler's forehead, but he was afraid the slightest disturbance might disturb her tenuous sleep and he had already indulged himself by moving the stray hair out of here face. It was okay. He could stay with her like this forever.

However, angry voices from the front of the shuttle jarred him out of his reverie. He carefully extricated himself from underneath Kyler and crept into the other room. Wrex and Aleena were so engrossed in their conversation that neither noticed the human's entrance.

"It's not the same, Aleena," Wrex growled.

"I didn't say it was," Aleena countered, her voice remaining even.

"You said it was an alternative."

"That's what it is, Wrex. An alternative."

"They wouldn't be krogan!"

"No, but the essence of your culture would live on!"

"As asari? I don't think so. My people are warriors!"

"And mine are not?" Aleena's eyes laughed at Wrex's implication. "As I recall you destroyed an entire space station trying to kill me, and failed."

"Alright, fine. Now, how many asari do you know of would want krogans to father their children? Last I checked we didn't have any 'desirable' genetic traits to pass down."

"Many asari have had all manner of mates, Wrex," Aleena said patronizingly as if speaking with a belligerent child.

"Fine. Let me put it into terms you can't deny. Would you have a krogan father your child?"

Aleena was silent for a moment. "Wrex, I'm a mercenary. I wouldn't be a fitting mother for anyone's child."

"That's what I thought." There was silence for a moment.

Aleena was about to counter when the sound of Kaidan trying to sneak back out of the room caught the two combatants attention. Silently he cursed the loud swish of the automatic door. It had never seemed so loud before.

"I'm sorry," he said back peddling. "Small ship. Couldn't help but hear."

"Don't be shy, Alenko," Wrex commanded. "Come, join the conversation. Aleena was just telling me that it doesn't matter that my whole race was neutered. We just need to embrace eternity."

Kaidan looked over to Aleena. He saw something dance across her face, a flash of emotion. Aleena wasn't the only perceptive person on this ship. Kaidan could be borderline empathic when he wanted to be. It was the briefest of moments, but it was enough to allow him to identify the hurt in her eyes.

"Shut up, Wrex," he said.

"What did you say?" Wrex looked more confused than angry. He turned his giant head on its side as Wrex tried to see more clearly the human he was about to kill.

"I said shut up. She's your friend whether you want to admit it or not and she was trying to help. Stop being an ass." Kaidan had a vague idea that there was a lot more to Aleena's pain that what he was verbalizing, but he didn't want to betray her secret, whatever it was.

"Thank you, Kaidan, but I can fight my own battles," Aleena stopped the escalation in the conversation. "Go back to your wife."

"His wife is here," Kyler announced. There was something missing in her voice. It was commanding as always, but it was missing the underlying tone it usually possessed. What was missing? Kaidan racked his brain. It wasn't confidence. What was it? Then he realized what it was. Optimism. Happiness.

Her voice always sounded as if it concealed some private joke bubbling just below the surface. Now, it was empty.

"How far out are we from, Earth?" She asked in her new deadened voice. Kaidan deeply missed all the inflections and nuances of her normal speech.

"We're about eight hours out," Aleena informed her. "I'm taking a..." she rocked her head side to side searching for a euphemism, "less direct approach and will be landing in a port that, shall we say, does not require clearances."

"Just don't wreck my ship trying to land in that damn valley," Wrex interjected.

Aleena rolled her eyes and ignored her friend. "Hopefully, we're headed to the right location."

"I'm sure Garrus and his team will do just fine if it turns out they're really on Terra Nova," Kyler assured her. There were still bags under her eyes. It had taken them a few jumps to get to Sol, during all that time she'd slept maybe a few hours and even that precious time was broken up by images of Kralag brutalizing her family.

"Yes, but I don't want to deal with a cranky krogan if we're not the ones that get to shoot the Illusive Man in the head."

"None of us do," Kaidan added, emboldened by Aleena's seeming immunity to Wrex's anger.

"Why don't you two hit the rack?" Kyler suggested.

"Sure," Aleena said accommodatingly. Once again, Kaidan's sixth sense told him there was something else behind Aleena's words. As the mercenary reached into a med kit that hung on the wall he realized what was about to go down.

Kyler staggered forward and took the pilot chair Aleena had just vacated.

"Oh wait, I forgot something," Aleena turned back to her station. Kyler was busy looking around her feet to see what it was the asari might have left when the hiss of the hypospray went off. She slumped forward in her seat.

"Here we go, Shepard," Aleena said easing her out of the chair and handing her off to Wrex.

"Alenko, think you can handle piloting the ship alone."

"Definitely."

"Good," she yawned.

"How much did you put in there?" He asked as Wrex carried Kyler back and placed her on an empty cot.

"Enough to ensure dreamless sleep for at least four hours."

* * *

She came to in a dark room. Her arms and legs were bound. Her head violently protested her attempts to right herself.

"Ah, good morning," a male voice greeted her.

Sarah commanded force her eyes to focus. Her eyes remained insubordinate.

"Still a little groggy I see but that's to be expected."

"Who are you? Where am I?" Sarah questioned while scanning the room. Her sight had yet to return. All she could make out was a swimming vision of moving shadows and light.

"I am no one of consequence and you are, for the present, safe."

As Sarah's vision returned she started to make out the details of her captor. He was in his late middle age. Whatever color hair he had once, it was gone now. He was of medium height, medium build. The only striking feature he had was the color of his icy blue eyes.

Sarah began mentally checking off the five W's. "Okay, why am I here?"

"Because I arranged it."

Sarah's frustration was building up to another out of body experience. She pulled so hard against her restraints that she began to cut herself. It seemed the man realized she was about to be more trouble than his cryptic responses were worth.

"I supposed you're not going anywhere. You remember Shepard was on a mission right?"

"Yes, but I didn't know what. So torturing me isn't going to get you anything useful." Her mind turned to Ash of its own volition. She hoped the sudden realization hadn't played across her face.

"You're not going to be tortured." Thankfully, he took Sarah's evident relief as proof she didn't want to be in pain, rather than proof that she did in fact, have useful information. "The nature of the mission isn't really important. What is important is Shepard's relationship to you."

"I'm nothing special to her," Sarah lied.

"Hmm..." the older man mused. "I think given the option between completing her current mission and rescuing you, Shepard will choose to protect the Williams family from suffering another tragic loss."

"Shepard always puts the mission first!" Sarah suddenly felt guilty for endangering whatever it was Kyler was doing. Whatever it was, had brought the Specter out of retirement. It must be important.

"Nobody always does anything. That's why it's important to study them, find the exceptions. Your exception, for example, was to find someone who'd be willing to insult your sister in front of you for fun, let alone if I'd paid him. Or are you always a borderline psychotic with violent tendencies?"

"Untie me and find out," Sarah growled.

The man laughed but there was no mirth in his eyes. "Ah, there is some Williams in you. Sit tight, Sarah. As soon as Shepard comes here this will all be over, and you can go join the special forces, maybe even get a death-before-dishonor tattoo."

"I'm an engineer," she protested.

"An engineer who is not going to pass up the opportunity her sister always wanted but could never have because she bore the stained reputation of her grandfather. An engineer who wants big sister to look down from heaven and be proud. Don't play mind games with yourself. You've already made your decision."

Sarah slumped closer to the ground in defeat. He was right. She hated him for being right. He barely knew her and he was able dissect her life so easily. She hated the was this man studied people, pulled them apart as if there were nothing but predictable machines making predestined responses. She was a human, with a soul, with a choice, with...with...a mother who loved her and would be devastated by the loss of another daughter.

_I'm sorry, mom._

_

* * *

_

"How soon until we can move him," asked the obscured face of the Illusive Man.

The scientist turned to face the vid screen.

"He's still unstable. Per chance if the thugs you hired to kidnap him had not been so rough, we could have kept him on a ship, kept him mobile, and we wouldn't have this problem."

The Illusive Man smiled to himself. Scientists were so...opinionated, almost fearless. Very few people spoke to the Illusive Man in such a manner and they all happened to be scientists. He wondered what it was about their make up that made them think they weren't expendable. Or maybe they simply valued their work more than their lives.

"ETA?" he asked serenely.

"Nine hours, minimum."

"I think we can provide you with the requisite time." With that he disabled the screen and turned to other pressing issues, such as, what to do with Kralag. He hated working with aliens but at the time he had no other operatives on Omega, and he needed his soon to be leak dealt with. He could see now that trusting the batarian was a mistake. At least Kralag was a foolish enemy.

There was no way he would have just happened to run into the first human specter on Omega. Shepard had fallen off the radar for sometime now, much to the Illusive Man's relief. Her constant pandering to the aliens had been annoying enough, but she was starting to rub off on the rest of humanity. There was a human on the council. More and more humans were working for C-Sec. Merchants traded with the turians. Scientists, human scientists, had been helping Dr. Sabon try and discover a cure for the genophage.

But now Shepard just happened to resurface on an asteroid several jumps from she had been living and any of her known associates. Then, she just happened to run into a Cerberus hired assassin? No, something had lead her to that asteroid. He must have sold her the very information he was trying to keep from being leaked. Now, he had a double agent on his hands.

Fortunately, he had been a very stupid double agent., one who actually thought he might be hired again. The Illusive Man wondered to himself if the batarian scum even realized that his team had just become cannon fodder if Shepard's team did, in fact, find the correct lab. If she didn't, well, he needed to make special plans for his turncoat.

"We must keep up appearances," he said to himself.

* * *

Kralag was pleased with himself. Not only had he successfully gotten paid for two mutually exclusive jobs, he had just happened to see Shepard and her loyal dog walking down the streets of Omega.

The former had been easy enough. He had been hired to kill an agent of Cerberus by Cerberus. Obviously the target must have been a mole, or was about to be. He had just broken into the man's shuttle when the incoming transmission from Aleena had come in. She had not expected her contact to be batarian, but it had been easy enough to convince her that he was in possession of the information she wanted.

He had been enjoying a celebratory drink at one of the local bars and considering other celebratory activities as some of the local color walked past the pub window flaunting their stock. Then out of nowhere walks two humans. How did nobody recognize them?

It was true they looked different. Shepard's hair was longer. She had a few more scars. Alenko's wavy hair had been shorn in favor of a more practical style. They both were significantly more tan. Obviously they were spending more time planet side than onboard ships these days. But still, was everyone on Omega so wrapped up in staying alive and pursuing their own interests that nobody notices two living legends walk by?

He was about to get up to follow them, to make sure, when he was distracted by a loud thudding coming from the back room of the bar.

"What was that?" Kralag asked the volus barkeep.

The volus took an audible breath through his environmental suit. "Oh, that? Some turian paid me 500 credits to let him store a few of his acquaintances in the freezer overnight."

"That doesn't seem strange to you?"

The volus shrugged, "Very strange, but it was 500 credits."

By the time Kralag had turned around they were gone. He'd lost his chance to verify their identity. But at the time he thought, what the hell? Cerberus was an openly xenophobic group. Shepard openly cooperated with aliens. Maybe the info would be worth a few more credits.

He had never dreamed it would lead him to yet another job. Yet here he was with his crew, enjoying a nice easy security guard gig, on Earth of all places. The humans on this planet would be terrified to know how easy it had been for him to land on their home planet without being discovered. He laughed to himself, imagining the soft, two eyed creatures running in panicked circles at the discovery of batarians on earth.

His mind wandered back to some of his earlier jobs, back when he was in the slave trade. The raids on human colonies were always the same. The frightened little mammals would all scurry about trying to save each other. That was the funny part, watching a weak human throw himself in front of an equally weak human as if either of them could be saved.

He remembered one raid in particular. There had been this one little female...oh how he wished he'd gotten his hands on her. Her shocking red hair had made her stand out to him amongst the rest of the cattle they were rounding up. And she had some fire to her. He would have spent days breaking that one, but it would have been worth it. Alas, it wasn't meant to be. He wondered what ever happened to her.

"Probably went insane or put a bullet in her head," he said to no one in particular. Humans were such weak creatures.

**Two days, two posts. The demands for more chapters faster got to me. (Some of you are pretty scary...just kidding.) Maybe I can finish this thing out within the week. Maybe. It'd be nice to not have it hovering over me with a whip, screaming "Finish me! Finish me!"**


	15. End Game Part I

**Okay, I know you're wondering "What happened to this will be finished in a week?" Well, the supposedly last chapter got longer...and longer....and longer... So I decided to cut it off at some point and at least stop leaving everyone hanging. Shout out to Sweetness who's been correcting my grammar lately. If it's clean, it's because he caught it. If it's wrong, it's because I changed it after he read it. Enjoy. (I hope.)**

**Edit: Excuse me. Apparently Sweetness wants to be known as heraclitus1. What? How was I supposed to know you were going to go all motivational on me instead of sticking with your customary sn? Speaking of heraclitus, he's going to do a prequel to this. So if you get bored with me, go look for his story. **

**______________________________________________________________________________**

"Prepare for landing," Kaidan said crisply as his fingers glided across the flickering lights of the shuttle controls. His jaw clenched, his eyes losing their familiar gentle demeanor and gaining a hard edge to reflect the one in his voice. The mission was no longer an abstract future somewhere in the distance, it was a concrete happening and it was in his face.

Wrex grunted his acknowledgment and promptly neglected to engage his restraining system, don his helment, or even bother to brace himself.

Kaidan was in the process of helping Aleena land the shuttle in one of the nine prearranged landing sites. Between the two mercenaries and the former Spectre, there were plenty of purportedly "good" contacts to go around, but it was a sad statement of fact that not one of them could be trusted completely. To assume Cerberus didn't have their hooks in any of them was to walk right into a trap.

Thus, all of them had contacted at least one person and asked for different provisions for different reasons at different landing sites scattered throughout the planet. Some were complete hoaxes, nowhere near the compound they intended to assault. Some were intended as back up sites in case things went south where they initially landed.

Kaidan entered coordinates for their first choice; a valley that, if the contact came through, should have a pre-positioned Mako waiting for them. Kaidan felt a well of nostalgia thinking about the old class of vehicle. Well, maybe it was a well of nausea considering how Kyler used to insist on driving that particular type of vehicle. Anyhow, an outdated all-terrain vehicle wouldn't look out of place in the park where it was set up. Civilians loved to use outmoded military trucks to race through the mud on sunny days.

He brought the ship in as low and as fast as he dared and mentally breathed a sigh of relief as he saw a Mako's signature pop up on his scanners. Kaidan swiveled in his seat and hit the ramp controls. A widening beam of sunlight assaulted eyes that had grown accustomed to the artificial light of the shuttle.

Aleena was the first off the shuttle after their quartet landed on Earth. She didn't so much run down the off ramp so much as she danced down it. Between her graceful movements and shiny black armor, it was easy to surmise that she could kill a man with devastating alacrity. There is nothing black and shiny in nature. Her wearing that armor meant one of two things: either she was woefully inept at combat and would be taken out in the first volley; or she didn't care if you could see her coming because there was nothing you could do about it. Smart men would bet on the latter. Despite the gravity of the situation, Aleena wore her customary smirk, as if this was just another chance to prove her superiority to the world.

Wrex rumbled down after her. Years of firefights had stolen his emotional highs and lows. He was as blasé about being shot at as he was about killing the fool who shot at him. As if being a well-armed krogan battle master wasn't intimidating enough, Wrex's trademark scar gave him an even more fearsome mien.

Two sets of wary eyes scanned opposing sectors of fire, daring someone to attack. Even from on board the ship, Kaidan could feel the precipitous build up of dark energy around the two. It wasn't enough to be visually evident, but a trained biotic could sense just how close they were to throwing up full on biotic barriers. (Actually, anyone who had been close enough would have felt their hair stand on end.) Once satisfied this was not an ambush, they signaled all clear to the others.

_Clunk, clunk. _

Kyler's booted footsteps reverberated down the shuttle's off ramp as she paused near the exit. Fearsome as she was beautiful, the former commander took stock of her surroundings. Holding her helmet to her hip, lose stands of hair got caught up in a passing breeze. A multitude of weapons adorned her back. The new armor Wrex had provided smacked of her old Colossus gear. Swaths of red played across the black armor, accentuating the curves of her athletic body. Had Kaidan not had more pressing issues on his mind, she might not have made it out the shuttle.

_Clunk, clunk._

He walked up beside her and put his grey clad hand on her shoulder, "Ready?"

Her sidelong glare left no doubt, that she was in fact, more than ready.

Kaidan smiled. This was more like the confident, determined woman he'd fallen in love with. Sleep had done her a universe of good. "Let's go then," he said as they both put on their helmets and made they way down the ramp.

Wrex had already stationed himself in the gunner's turret. Aleena started to climb into the driver's seat when Kyler stopped her, "Thanks, but I'll drive."

Aleena stepped away from the driver's seat without a second thought, but she could have sworn both Wrex and Alenko had flinched.

Despite their initial reservations. Nobody objected to Kyler's habitual speeding today. She had covered more terrain in minutes than any of them would have dared to travel in such a miniscule amount of time. Kaidan just closed his eyes and waited for it to be over.

Wrex, continued scanning the horizon in the turret. He was still the stoic, intelligent fighter they'd come to know, but boiling under the surface, Kaidan could tell that he was frustrated and twitchy. Between Wrex's agitation, Kyler's past demons, and Aleena's secret, Kaidan wondered briefly if he was the only one on this mission who still had his head in the game.

He didn't have too long to dwell on the thought as the comm system in the Mako suddenly flared to life.

_Hello, Shepard._ The Mako must have been close to the facility, Kyler surmised. They must have just popped up on the radar.

"Who is this?" Kyler demanded.

_The person with a gun to Sarah Williams' head. The person who will blow it off if you don't stop your vehicle immediately. _

Everyone in the vehicle was thrust violently forward as Kyler break checked the crew.

_That's better. _The disembodied voice confirmed he had positive observation of Kyler's team.

"Where's Sarah?" Shepard demanded.

_I'm uploading her coordinates to you onboard computer now. She'll be there for the next thirty minutes as long as no one else approaches this facility. Better hurry._

"Dammit," Kaidan said plugging in Sarah's location. "At top speed, she's 28 minutes away."

"They're obviously trying to buy themselves enough time to move the subject," Aleena voiced everyone's assumption allowed. "At least this means we're on the right planet."

"We're wasting time," Kyler spat. "I need to turn the Mako around."

"**WHAT?"** Wrex roared. For the first time since the Mako's conception, the vehicle occupants were grateful for its cramped design. It kept Wrex securely in the turret and inhibited his ability to physically demonstrate his ire. "You blew up the original cure for my race in order to stop Saren! Now you're going to let _THIS_ cure go to save a single human! Just where exactly do my people fall out on your priority list, Shepard?"

"Calm down, Wrex," Kyler said unflustered, her voice taking on the distinct edge it carried during a mission. "I said, 'I need to turn the Mako around.' We're not going anywhere."

"Shepard, I would advise against..." Aleena started.

"I'm going for Sarah," Kyler said with finality. "You three continue with the mission."

"You can't be serious. You can't wander into a trap alone. Besides, how are we supposed to get close without them noticing three hardsuit signatures? Kye, please think this through," her husband implored.

"I have," Shepard gave her husband a wolfish grin. Kaidan deflated. Marriage had bestowed upon them a higher form of implicit communication.

"Oh, this is going to hurt."

"What's going to hurt?" Aleena looked from one Alenko to the other.

"Ever do a PDR?" Kaidan asked.

"A what?"

"Power Down Run," Kyler said with a half grin, probably because she was the only one in the vehicle who wasn't about to embark on one.

Kaidan, or at least Kaidan's stomach, remembered the grueling PDRs at boot camp. The DIs would come around the formation, taking everyone's batteries out of their suits. Meanwhile they would extol the virtues of the PDR. _You're not going to just dump your armor, are you, if your suit has a malfunction? _They would say. _The armor itself, with no shielding, will happily take several rounds. Several rounds which I can assure you, YOU would not so happily take._ Of course, for a suit to malfunction like that, either you hadn't maintained it properly or you were already dead from whatever damaged it so badly in the first place. Kaidan had never heard of someone actually doing one in combat before. He had always thought it was just another way for DIs to torture recruits. Until now.

"They expect to see the Mako turn away and no hard suit signatures, that's exactly what they're going to see," Kyler said as she pulled a 180 in the Mako.

"I still don't like the idea of you going alone. We could divide up evenly," Kaidan said turning off his armor. It whirred as it lost power. His HUD faded away. Suddenly, he felt very heavy in his seat as all the servos in his suit went dead.

"Someone needs to make nice for the sensors. Besides, Wrex was right about rescuing the krogan. It's the more important mission. We were going to be hard pressed to get him with four team members. With three..." she let the thought hang.

Kaidan sighed his acquiescence and sincerely hoped this wasn't the last marital spat he was going to have the chance to lose. With that the three passengers rolled out of the Mako and started running for the facility.

Kyler didn't relish the idea of stranding the team as she drove away in their only vehicle, but it was the only way to make it to Sarah in time. She would be damned before she let another Williams die.

"Maybe I already am," she said to herself.

The three man team faded in the rearview camera. Terrain passing the windows was an indistinguishable blur of green and brown. Every so often the Mako would catch air. At first Kyler would deftly tap the jets to smooth the vehicle's landing and save the suspension, but as precious time ticked away she found herself allowing the vehicle to crash into the ground rather than lose those few seconds suspended in the air.

Kyler was sure she was too late when she found the entrance to the abandoned building located at the given coordinates. The Mako kicked up plant matter and left angry scars in the ground where Kyler slammed on the breaks. It had yet to stop rolling as she jumped out the door and deployed her shot gun.

"Nothing like your favorite shotty for close quarters," she said to herself.

Kyler didn't even bother trying to hack the door without Kaidan. She impatiently dumped omni-gel on the locking mechanism and watched as the door control hissed and crackled, the circuitry spitting angrily in its death throws as it melted away. It was a good thing for the door that it decided to open when it did, otherwise the impatient Spectre might have walked through it, leaving a human shaped hole in its center.

She stared down a long hallway. After gaining her bearings she headed towards the only door. It was unlocked. Kyler prepped a flash bang with her back to the wall adjacent to the door. Then she slammed the door control and let the spoon fly. The grenade went off and Kyler swung in the door.

***

Kaidan's legs burned in angry defiance as he commanded the appendages to keep running. The heat building up in his suit was suffocating. It rested on his lungs along with the weight from his chest plate, refusing to let him breath.

Wrex and Aleena seemed to be coping with the dead weight of their lifeless suits just fine. He hoped they were just putting on a good show. Otherwise, he was doing humanity a disservice. Although, in his defense, he_ had_ been recently hospitalized.

He had started a count down once the disembodied voice on the radio had given them a half hour to retrieve Sarah. That meant Cerberus needed at least that much time to move the krogan, Kaidan surmised. Unfortunately, with his suit powered down, his HUD was non-existent and he couldn't tell how much of the allotted time this little stunt had eaten up.

When a small, generic, white building came into view, he almost let out an ecstatic whoop. He couldn't believe the team had covered 5 clicks so quickly. However, exertion had drained the enthusiasm as well as the volume from his voice, and instead, Kaidan merely let out a contented mumble.

The mercenaries came to a stop near some rocks and Wrex deployed his sniper rifle. Looking through the scope he informed the rest of the team of the minimal defenses around the outside of the facility. His voice sounded flat and muted from behind his helmet.

"Three snipers. Two in nests, one on the ground. A couple mercs behind barriers."

Aleena deployed her own sniper rifle. "I concur. Alenko, how good a shot are you with a sniper rifle?"

"Should have asked that before Omega," he huffed jogging up behind them. His legs wobbled, threatening to give out on him.

Aleena glared at him.

"Good enough from this range," Kaidan said regaining his breath.

"Good. We'll drop the three snipers together. Then Wrex and I will take the mercs."

"Let's do it," Kaidan said as he pulled his rifle into his shoulder.

***

Sarah had no idea where her captor had gone. She had been alone for what seemed like hours. She hoped that her concept of time had been warped by isolation. If it had indeed, been hours, it would only compound her current feelings of inadequacy. She had been trying to find a way out her bindings ever since the man left, but to no avail. Nothing in the room was sharp enough or burned hot enough to get through the metal clasps on her arms and legs and Sarah was positioned at too awkward an angle to try and pick the lock.

She was contemplating chewing her hands off when the door opened. Sarah froze, not wanting her captor to know what she had been up to. Either he would be angry and punish her or he would be amused and mock her for her inability to escape. Neither option was particularly pleasant but at this point she'd rather take a beating then than endure patronizing comments that would propel her deeper into frustration with herself.

But the man didn't come through the door. A small metal cylinder did.

_Clink, clink, clink. _

"Oh shi..."

Sarah's obscenities were drowned out by the ensuing explosion. She had tried to look away but it was too late. The combined forces of the concussion, the blinding light, and the deafening roar had overwhelmed her formerly starved senses. Her whole world consisted of slow moving smoke and a single tone.

Sarah felt herself hauled into the air. Slowly, too slowly, she commanded her head to turn to face her attacker. Who was this person? What were they saying? What did they want? Suddenly a gloved hand smacked her across the face and the world jump started again.

"Dammit, Sarah! Answer me," Kyler demanded.

"What? Oh, Shepard. Thank God!"

"Who else is here Sarah?"

"I've only seen one other person, ma'am."

Something wasn't right. The Illusive Man wouldn't play these odds. The first human Spectre versus a lone operative. He must have an ace in the hole. It was time to get out of here, now, before he had a chance to employ it.

"All right, Sarah. Let's get you out of here." Kyler wasn't about to shoot the girl's hands off trying to free her from her bonds. Instead Kyler caught Sarah by the shoulder and swung the young woman over her back in a fireman's carry.

It wasn't that far to the Mako. They could be out of here and on their way to help the team in minutes. She hoped they were doing all right without her. Kyler silently pleaded for the safety of her husband. She'd lost enough loved ones in her life and wasn't sure she'd be able to take losing anymore, especially Kaidan.

With one hand Kyler balanced the load of the younger woman on her shoulders. With the other she propped her shotgun up in front of her. She turned to face the previously unoccupied doorway. An older man with ice blue eyes blocked her path. His had a firm grip on a pistol aimed directly at Kyler and Sarah. Kyler was underwhelmed.

"Old man, I've killed rogue Spectres, krogan battle masters, asari commandos, rampant geth, and an all-powerful race of machines bent on destroying the universe. Not to mention, I've just had the week from hell." She looked at his pistol incredulously, "Seriously?"

"You're not going to kill me," the man stated simply.

"Get. Out. Of. My. Way." She articulated each word with deadly precision. Her eyes burned with righteous determination. Wells of pain and memory fueled the fire that dwelt there now. Kyler was taking Sarah out of here alive and not an army of geth was going to stop her, much less a lone Cerberus agent. A less confident opponent would have simply stepped aside.

"You're not going to kill me," he reassured her.

"Wrong." Shepard lifted her shotgun and fired. The shot was absorbed by a kinetic barrier at the door, previously invisible.

"I never imagined you'd grow up to be so ill-tempered, Kylie," the man laughed.

Kyler almost dropped Sarah. Only her family had ever called her that.

"Who the hell...?"

"Oh, has it really been that long, Kylie? You don't remember your own father anymore?"

***

Kaidan wasn't sure what to expect once he'd hacked into the controls of the underground lab. Sure he'd made an educated guess about the enemy's tactics and equipment. He'd spent his last free hours on the shuttle tinkering with his gear, trying to decide if he wanted Tungsten rounds to easily dispatch of droids or Shredder rounds to handle live enemies. Or maybe he'd want knock down power of Sledgehammer rounds. (In the end he'd loaded each of his weapons with a different type of ammunition.)

He hoped disabling the alarm would buy not only his team, but his wife sometime. (The enemy was sure to dispatch of Sarah when they realized the team had gone on with their original plan.) He thought that there would probably be armed guards when he got through the door. He prayed the door wasn't booby trapped. But of all the contingencies he had prepared for, none of them included a group of batarian mercenaries at the door.

"What the hell?" he asked no one in particular as he dove behind a large crate.

"Beats me," Aleena shrugged as she landed next to him.

Wrex didn't seem perturbed in the slightest that their enemies weren't human. In fact, he let the observation go unmarked as he unceremoniously lumbered in the door and began dispatching of enemies with complete disregard to their race. Many disparaging things could be said about the krogan battle master, but absolutely no one could say that he wasn't an equal opportunity killer. Well, they could, but they'd probably be killed for lying regardless of their race, color, or creed.

Aleena laughed. "We'd best go help him out before he starts complaining that he does all the work," she said rolling her eyes in good humor. Kaidan started to emerge from cover when a batarian came flying in his direction and almost collided with his head.

"Hey, Wrex! I know you're pissed, but watch it!"

______________________________________________________________________________

**In case you're wondering where the PDR came from, yes I know, I'm tinkering with cannon again, I was trying to figure out what would be the equivalent of humps/hikes in future boot camp. I mean, apparently weapons are collapsible and there's no need to reload and I've never seen my Shepard break out an MRE in the middle of a mission. So I was like, hmmm... And as Sweetness commented when he proofed, nothing says "Hey, we're in the military!" like a good acronym.**


	16. End Game Part II

Kyler carefully placed her friend on the floor. No sooner did Sarah touch the ground than Kyler had turned and stormed towards the barrier. She gestured towards the man with her shot gun.

"_You_ are _not_ my father," Kyler snarled, glaring at the man behind the barrier. He returned her look with an even gaze of his own until she turned to pace the small room. Conflicting thoughts and emotions tumbled through her mind, vying for dominance. She shook her head, desperately trying to deconflict what she was being told with what she thought she knew.

"A projection, a VI, a clone maybe...maybe I'm losing my mind..." she conjectured and then spun to face their captor, "But my father is dead. And _he_ would have never worked for Cerberus." Her voice was shaking with barely contained fury. How dare this wretched man claim to be her beloved dead father? Her father was a scientist and an explorer, not a killer. And he had loved her, doting on her from the day she was born until the day he died. She followed the train of thought to its logical conclusion. In a tone low and dangerous, she added "My father would never have left me to grow up alone if he was alive." Her face was so close to the energy field that it crackled in protest of her proximity.

"No I wouldn't have," the man stepped closer to the barrier, closer to Kyler. "Not if I had a choice. Kylie I was taken prisoner. The batarians sold me as a slave. I worked in a batarian mining camp for years until one day Cerberus agents showed up and freed me."

"And what? Now you make a living abducting young girls?" Kyler threw up her hand in a gesture of disgust.

"No, now I work for an organization that endeavors to prevent tragedies like the one that happened to our family. Now I work for humanity's protectors." For the first time since Sarah had met him, the man claiming to be Kyler's father displayed sincere emotion. His once dead eyes were now bright, burning with a conviction fueled by tragic memory.

"At what cost?" Kyler caught herself. She had almost addressed the apparition as dad. As much as part of her wanted to, she wasn't ready to accept her father was alive, either because she had thought him dead for so many years or because she couldn't bring herself to believe that her father could be a Cerberus agent.

"Your friend isn't hurt, Kylie."

"DON'T call me that."

"Kylie..."

Kyler drew her weapon and fired. The kinetic barrier flickered, but remained stable. "I still don't believe you're my father so I sincerely hope you're not banking on familiar feeling keeping you alive," Kyler growled.

"What would you have me call you?"

"I don't want you to call me anything. I want you to drop that damn barrier so that I can get Sarah out of here and go on with my mission."

Pain flicked across the man's eyes but only for a moment. Hope took residence in its place as he drew breath to speak.

"Look, Kye...Kyler," he decided against invoking the diminutive of her name lest he provoke her further. "I haven't hurt an innocent soul in my life. Your friend was never in any danger. I was just told that if I got her here, Cerberus would arrange a meeting with you. All I had to do was keep you here until 1530. What is so bad about what I've done?" His eyes pleaded for Kyler's understanding.

"Well, I don't know. What else have you done since your escape? You know, besides abducting one of my friends and never once trying to contact your daughter?"

"I tried, Kyler. After my escape I tried desperately to find you. You...you were the only body I didn't find that day when I came back to the hab. All those years...I'd...I'd hoped...." The man looked away to recover himself.

"I found plenty of information on you, vids of the remarkable woman you had become, stories of your accomplishments. It was surreal. I went in search of a 16 year old girl and found a living legend. I look at you, even now, and I see my sweet Kyli...my little girl," he placed a hand against the barrier, ignoring the shock it must have been delivering to his nervous system. "But though I could find terabytes and terabytes of information on you, you yourself had fallen of the grid. Even Cerberus didn't know where you were. They told me they thought you were dead."

"Hmpf, maybe Cerberus should reconsider their policy on alien employees. Obviously it takes an intractable krogan to hunt me down," she mumbled under her breath. She was getting impatient. The only family she'd had since she was 16 was fighting for his life right now and she wasn't there with him, helping him.

She glared at the man sidelong through narrowed eyes. "So you expect me to believe, that Cerberus agents just happened to find you, freed you out of a sense of altruism, and then decided that a former slave would just," she shook her head at the absurdity, "make an excellent agent?"

"You'd be surprised what you can learn in those mines, Kyler, about yourself, your limits, about others and what drives them. Reading people is a valuable skill in this business. Besides, I owed Cerberus my life, and thus my loyalty. Loyalty to the cause is the virtue the Illusive Man values the most. After I failed to find you... They didn't recruit me. I asked to join Cerberus and I took satisfaction in my work, knowing I was protecting the human race from the devastation you and I suffered. For years I traveled from place to place, manipulating events and people in Cerberus' favor. And then, one day out of the blue, I get a message. They had found you. They offered me this mission. They offered me a chance to reconnect with my daughter."

"Are you that naive?" Kyler demanded. "I find it hard to believe that Cerberus didn't have the resources or the information needed to hunt me down until now. They've known where I was. Hell, I'm pretty sure they tried to kill me as soon as I left my home planet. They probably planned this move out years in advance, just in case I resurfaced, decided to work against their interests. That's how the Illusive Man works. He plays people like so many chess pieces, positioning them on the board to his liking. They didn't just now find out where I was. They didn't want to reward you for years of service. They kept you around as an insurance policy against me. That's probably why they freed you in the first place, not out of some sense of duty towards humanity. Do you know why they wanted you to keep me here? Why they wanted you to distract me? Right now, you're buying them the time they need to write a death sentence for every non-human life in the galaxy. Are you so blinded by loyalty that you can't see that they're using you? Or are you okay with what they're planning?" Her words dripped with bitterness and accusation.

"Kyler," her father looked at her, part hurt and part confused. "What are you talking about?"

***

"Pesky little bugger, where'd you go?" Wrex demanded of the last batarian guard alive.

Wrex was haphazardly tossing crates and equipment aside, alternating between using biotics and hitting them with his own hands and feet. Kaidan and Aleena stood well back and out of the way. Kaidan had started quietly laughing at the sheer ridiculousness of Wrex's fury. Aleena looked bored, as if she was far too used to this behavior.

"Ha! Found you!" Wrex proclaimed

Even Aleena snorted when the last batarian left alive let out a frightened whimper as the angry krogan unearthed his hiding spot. Kaidan shared an amused look with his new-found mercenary friend.

Wrex was about to unceremoniously put a bullet in the batarian's head when a distinctive scare caught his attention.

"You guys are not going to believe this shit," Wrex called to his teammates.

"What?" Aleena and Kaidan chorused as they both started forward to see what Wrex had found.

"By the Goddess" and "Damn" bled over each other as each combatant laid eyes on Kralag's prone form. Dead silence suffocated the room.

"You want to take the kill in Shepard's place?" Wrex said without preamble.

"Kill? Shepard?" Kralag began babbling. _Had they come to kill him in return for exposing their whereabouts?_ Kralag's terrified mind was trying to catch up with reality. Wrex, clearly annoyed, put a boot across Kralag's mouth.

"Shut up, Kralag. Grown ups are talking." Turning to Kaidan he asked, "Well?"

Kaidan felt his whole body tremble as rage overtook him, possessed his soul. His heart sped adrenaline throughout his system as he glared down at the man who had stolen his wife's childhood. Pure, unadulterated hatred twisted and contorted his normally soft and gentle visage. He'd never taken glee in the violence his job required of him, but he had a sick feeling in the back of his mind that he was about to cross a line he had sworn he never would. He stepped forward, his deep blue corona swirling around his darkened features.

An armored black hand grasped his shoulder, staying his attack. He turned to see Aleena shaking her head.

"Why not?" Kaidan protested, his voice growling with vehemence even he didn't expect.

"This is something you don't come back from, Alenko. There are precious few people left in this universe who are truly good, who, as my people would say, always walk in the light. You and Shepard shouldn't taint yourselves with this. In a way it's a blessing she's not here." Aleena paused. "Do you think it would be enough for her to know he's dead? That he can't hurt anyone else? Would that give her closure?"

Kaidan was still shaking with anger. It took herculean effort to speak with a steady voice. "Yes," he said as his biotic corona flickered and faded away. Kaidan released the breath he hadn't realized he was holding as the dark energy dissipated, no longer casting shadows across his face. The malice drained from his expression.

"Go watch the entrance to the next room."

"What? Why?"

"Trust me, Kaidan and don't ask questions. Wrex, would you mind bringing that," she indicated Kralag, "over to the ante room where we entered?"

"Heh," Wrex answered as if it were a pointless question.

Wrex palmed Kralag's skull like a basketball as he dragged him still babbling back the way the team had come. Aleena swaggered after him and locked the door behind her. She would not force even a sin of omission upon Kaidan. This would fall to her and Wrex. There was already a great deal of blood on their hands. It wasn't as if Kralag's addition would even be noticed against their crimson stained pasts.

Kaidan didn't have to wonder long what she had in mind. He felt the gathering gravitational forces tingling across his skin, pulling at his mind.

***

"So, Kralag," Aleena started amicably. "Apparently you and Commander Shepard have a history. Did you know that?"

"I was just trying to make a few extra credits," he explained pitifully.

"Shhhh... Kralag, slaving is not a very palatable way to make credits, and that's coming from someone who has sunk pretty low for a few extra."

"Slaving? What?"

Wrex's bellowing laugh echoed eerily in the small room. "I bet this varren dropping doesn't even realize what he did."

"We should probably thank him," Aleena said. "Shepard might not have become the woman she did had he not forced her to endure hardship so early in life. Who knows? She might have gone on to be one of the consort's acolytes and we'd all be indoctrinated by now."

"Yeah, but we'd be thoroughly relaxed from her great massages before we died," Wrex said drolly.

"We'll never know though will we?"

"Aleena, I know you like toying with the bad guys but we're on a tight schedule here."

Aleena sighed. "Always on to the next fight with you, isn't it Wrex? Very well. Kralag, you're about to suffer. You're about to suffer a lot for what you did to our friend, Commander Shepard. So if you have a particular deity you wish to ask dispensation from, I'd do it now." With that she began to glow with an ominous biotic charge.

Kralag screamed unintelligibly as Aleena ever so calmly and ever so precisely warped his right leg and nothing but his right leg. The limb twisted and contorted in grotesque permutations until the gravitational fields receded leaving the lifeless mass of bio-matter. Wrex watched the procedure intently throughout its entirety. He'd always had a macabre fascination with the precision of Aleena's biotics.

"What did I do?" Kralag whimpered as he started to pass out.

"Oh well this won't do," Aleena said in mock frustration. She reached into her med kit to retrieve a stim pack. She grasped the green cylinder and slammed it against his good thigh. A needle ejected from one end and released its contents into Kralag's system.

"He still doesn't know," Wrex inferred.

"Kralag. Kralag! Look at me now, Kralag," Aleena said slapping his face. "You need to listen," she admonished. "Kralag, do you remember a planet named Mindoir?"

"Raided... planet… years ago…"

"Yes, yes you did," Aleena spoke as if extolling a dutiful student.

"That happened to be Commander Shepard's home planet. That was her colony you ransacked," Wrex said, filling in the details.

"The red-headed girl," Kralag thought aloud, his eyes getting suddenly wide. It was rare to see any humans with natural red hair anymore. Even in his semi-conscious state, Kralag could connect the dots.

"Yup, that's the one." Wrex said. He stomped on Kralag's remaining leg, putting all of his considerable strength and weight behind it.

Kralag squealed a decidedly insentient sound. .

"You killed her mother," Aleena continued the narrative for Kralag's benefit and then ground her booted heal into Kralag's groin.

"Left her brother to be eaten by varren," Wrex added as he slapped the batarian across the face, careful not to knock him out.

"Who knows what you had planned for her," Aleena said dropping down to Kralag's eye level. "Funny though," and Aleena did seem genuinely amused. "It turns out an unarmed, untrained, adolescent, _human_ had more fight in her than you did."

"Did Shepard order me dead?" Kralag gasped.

"No," Aleena intoned.

Wrex grabbed the former slaver by the shoulders and hauled him up against the wall so Aleena didn't have to kneel any more.

"See, Shepard's better than that. She got over that travesty she called a childhood and instead of seeking vengeance, instead of curling up into a ball and giving up on life, instead of becoming inured to the evil you exposed her to at such an impressionable age, she fought to stay above it. She has spent day in and day out battling scum like you her entire life and managed to never get any of it on her. She has a moral strength that she wouldn't dare tarnish for a waste of carbon such as yourself."

Wrex took over the dialogue. " It's what allowed her to fight for humanity while not losing her own. It's what allowed her to broker peace between the races. It's what made her the leader I left my way of life to follow. It's not something I'm going to let you take from her now. I won't let you walk out this door and afford you the chance to run into her again. I won't allow her to be tempted to do what by all rights she should be allowed to. No, she didn't order you dead. Hell, she didn't even know you were here. We're doing this...as a favor to the universe." Wrex was inches from Kralag's face by this point.

"You see," Aleena continued. "She forgot all about you until we ran into you on Omega, and once we're done with you here, she'll forget all about you again."

With that Wrex and Aleena went about the unpleasant business of dismantling Kralag.

***

"Cerberus is not the organization you think it is," Kyler sighed. Time was ticking by and she was getting nowhere with the man she was becoming increasingly sure was her father. He turned from her with his head in his hands, exposing the back of his neck. A competent surgeon had left very few scars, but it was obvious to her what had been there.

"Kylie, they freed me from that hell hole. The have clothed, fed, and employed me since. I owe them everything. I can't believe this...preposterous killer virus story. I know they compartmentalize information, telling each of us only what we need to know in order to complete our part of the mission, but I would know about something like this, or at least have some inkling. I've crossed into some morally gray areas for Cerberus but this..."

"You don't understand what they're capable of. I've seen them use entire colonies as lab rats, unleash horrible creatures on innocent people, assassinate Alliance soldiers who had done nothing wrong. These are not the brave defenders of humanity's weak and innocent. They prey on the weak as much as the batarians who killed our family. They're playing you to get to me. They thought they could buy some time by threatening Sarah, and failing that, reuniting us. They probably thought seeing you would keep me here longer or that at the very least I'd be less likely to attack you. But let me make it clear, right now. I don't care who you claim to be. You're between me and my mission and that is a very dangerous place to be. You're helping them destroy the galaxy. I spent a lot of time and lost some good people saving that galaxy. I don't want it to be all for nothing."

"Cerberus has taken care of me. Every mission I've done for them has been for the greater good…" The elder Shepard shook his head in denial. He'd held on to this cause for so long. It was all the universe had left for him to hold on to. He'd lost his family, his home, his livelihood. Cerberus was all he had, all he believed in.

"Well then let me put it into simple terms for you. You can have Cerberus, or you can have me. There's no middle ground," Kyler gave her ultimatum.

He looked down for a long moment, then he met her eyes, her ice-blue eyes held a intense fire that mirrored the look in his own. No matter what loyalty he felt to Cerberus, he could not bear to lose his daughter twice. "What can I do to make this right?"

"Untie me for starters," Sarah suggested.

Both Shepards stared dumbly at the poor girl bound on the floor who had been forced to listen to their family melodrama while she slowly lost circulation in her limbs.

***

"Jump, Shepard. Shepard, there's a jump. ma'am, MA'AM, **MA'AM**!" Sarah grasped the seat cushion in a white knuckled death grip as the vehicle approached the ravine. The vehicle raced over the edge. Sarah dared to peak out the window and immediately regretted her decision. There nothing outside but miles and miles to fall.

The Mako landed safely on the other side of the abyss. In the ten minutes since they'd been in the vehicle, Shepard had driven it off a cliff (using the jets to soften the landing of course), decided to take it strait up a mountain instead of around it (Damn mountain. What is it doing in her way, anyhow?), and completely rolled it over (once again deftly employing the jump jets at precisely the right moment to stop the Mako's lateral motion.)

"Kylie, I'm beginning to regret not being around to teach you how to drive..."

"Shut up..." Kyler afforded him a quick glance, "Dad."

The Shepards in the vehicle smiled.

Sarah rolled her eyes. She just wanted this all to be over with. "Can we get to the fight already?"

This time only Kyler laughed.

"What's so funny?" Sarah asked.

"Ash lives again."

And then it was Sarah's turn to smile.

***

"Damn," Kaidan swore. They had been stalled at this hallway for what seemed like an eternity. He was juiced, his shields were drained, and shrapnel from the unending bombardment of grenade blasts and secondary explosions had breached his hardsuit and penetrated his thigh.

_At least it didn't hit the femoral artery. I really don't feel like performing field surgery on myself today, _Kaidan thought to 'd stopped the bleeding with medi-gel, but it wasn't going to be fun to stand on.

Aleena couldn't hear his expletive over the repeated grenade blasts. "This is where it would be nice to have that fourth person along," she yelled over to Kaidan while clutching her own wounded shoulder. Blood slid through her fingers in spurts and rolled down her the side of her suit like a macabre water fountain. Kaidan wasn't sure what color it was supposed to be, but it was bright, which he assumed meant oxygenated.

_Shit. Artery._ He crawled over to her, hoping he could stop the bleeding in time. He disengaged the locks on her hardsuit. The chest plate popped off and he went to work.

Under normal circumstances, if there were such a thing in combat, Wrex could just keep the enemies heads down while one of his teammates circled around and tried to flank their enemies while they were consumed with tossing grenades. As it stood, all Wrex could do was keep them from advancing.

Wrex for his part merely grunted and continued laying down suppressing fire. "They have to run out of grenades eventually."

"Before or after they kill us all, Wrex?" Aleena queried. Her voice went up and down in pitch depending one what Kaidan was doing with her wound.

"I vote before," Kaidan grunted through clenched teeth.

***

Kyler was out of the Mako so fast that her father and Sarah thought she had simply vanished and that the vehicle was driving itself. The other two grabbed stock weapons from the vehicle and followed after her as it rolled to a stop.

They entered the building in time to see Kyler slip and go sliding across the floor in a decidedly un-Marine like manner. "What the hell happened here?" She said allowing Sarah to help her up.

Sarah shrugged. "Don't know, but we could sure use a clean up on aisle seven."

Kyler shrugged as they swept into the other room. Boxes and crates were strewn everywhere at every angle and in various degrees of disrepair. "I hope they aren't overdoing the biotics too early," Kyler said, mostly to her self.

"Why?" Sarah asked.

"It takes a lot of energy, Sarah. Think of it like sprinting at the beginning of a Marathon."

"Batarians," the elder Shepard interrupted the explanation by kicking a dead body.

"Working for Cerberus?" Kyler questioned.

"This makes no sense," her dad stated.

"No time to figure it out now," Kyler said though the disgust was evident in her voice. Sarah couldn't blame either of them. From what she already knew about Kyler's childhood and from what she'd been able to piece together from their earlier conversation, both Shepards had good reason for their acrimony.

The trio continued down the hall in search of the other half of their team.

***

Another explosion rocked the fire team minus pinned behind the crates.

"Oh this is just ridiculous!" Kaidan exclaimed as he replaced Aleena's armor. "What? Are they making the grenades back there?"

Wrex ignored the comment. "I'd hate to admit it but I'm with Aleena. I wish we had that fourth person now."

Suddenly the boxes providing cover for the entrenched enemy were lifted up and flew backwards, leaving exposed several very confused Cerberus agents. One froze, quite comically, in the middle of throwing a grenade. It went off still in his hand much to the dismay of his fellow agents.

Before the remaining agents had time to react several well placed shotgun blasts dropped the last of them. Aleena, Kaidan, and Wrex looked back, confirming what they already suspected. Shepard stood there, shotgun at the ready, flanked by Sarah and her father.

"How about four, five, and six?"

Kaidan was dumbfounded. "Sarah?" He questioned. Sarah was still wearing the fatigues she was abducted in.

Kyler explained, "Sarah went to OCS."

"And graduated already?" Kaidan exclaimed.

Sarah shrugged. "I was on the accelerated program."

"What about this guy?" Wrex asked from well within the elder Shepard's personal space. Although significantly smaller than te krogan, he stood his ground.

"That's… that's a longer story," Kyler deflected.

The party re-grouped and headed for the main laboratory. Kaidan and Aleena were both mobile, but both were hobbling and suffering from various degrees of blood loss. They weren't going to be providing biotic support any time soon. They served as rear guard security as the party made their way forward. Kyler allowed Sarah to be up front with her, but kept a watchful eye over the girl. Wrex and Kyler's father were at the flanks.

They were coming up one what was supposed to be the main laboratory. Kyler silently signaled for the squad stack up on the door. Kaidan had started to pull his last grenade out on reflex and then thought better of it. Didn't make any sense to come all this way to rescue the kid just to blow him up now.

Kyler gave the signal and they burst through the door. She was the first through the breach and cut left. Wrex cam through second and went right. Aleena and Kaidan came straight in aiming at the center of the room, followed up by the two "civilians."

The lab was absolutely devoid of scientific equipment, scientists, and most notably, the krogan child.

"Oh this is so a trap," Aleena commented.

The party tensed as they heard the tell tale whirring of security droids.

"Oh, yeah," Kyler confirmed. "Trap."

Muzzles and eyes scanned for a possible entry point. Droid deployment shafts were inevitably well hidden, but hopefully they could catch the first one coming out, rather than let an entire hoard catch them unawares.

A tripod shaped droid floated down from what had appeared to be an air vent in the ceiling. It was quickly dispatched, but its brothers continued to swarm in.

Wrex went about destroying the metal insects in a mechanical fashion. Shepard it seemed, took personal offense to any droid getting to close to Sarah. She actually spit on one that fell close to her feet. Kaidan for his part, was content to stay under cover while he messed with the inner workings of the droids' programming.

He afforded himself a satisfied smile every time he caused one to power down at an inopportune moments and become an unwilling barricade for it's own assault force, or when he forced a droid to turn on its fellows. He could swear each time he hacked a droid into attacking its own side, its compatriots would do a mechanical double take, as if to tacitly say, "Really? Are you kidding me? You're a machine with specialized algorithms solving for millions of firing solutions a second and you missed? Shoot that guy!" Kaidan laughed as the machines seemingly portrayed quite human emotion, got pissed off at each other, and started fighting amongst themselves.

Aleena, stationed near Kaidan in case she relapsed, was firing her pistol one handed at the pile up of machines the engineer had caused. All was going well, or so it seemed.

Sarah was startled by a hand grabbing her from behind and spinning her to face a Cerberus agent. On reflex, she grabbed the arm attached to that hand, spun her body around, and threw her opponent over her shoulder, holding onto his arm so that tendons and muscles tore with a sickening _SNAP. _

She looked down and saw that the man was already dead. Her brain tried to register the fact that someone else must have shot him as he hit the ground. Fortunate for him really, the arm injury would have been quite painful. She looked up as someone slapped her in the back of the head and thrust a rifle into her hands. It was her rifle. _When did I drop that?_

"It's a lot easier to shoot them," Shepard half yelled.

Sarah took her rifle, looking baffled. "We hadn't really gotten to that part yet."

Shepard turned to her and smiled at her mid-battle, "Reticule go on bad guy, pull trigger."

By this time the once empty lab was now home to pure chaos. Rampant machinery was shooting every which way, some at other machines, some at Kyler's team, some even shot at the Cerberus agents that had now flooded the room from every entrance point. Cerberus had obviously led them to this room for an ambush and now had a steady stream of fire on each exit.

Wrex was winged by a drone and in his outrage, grabbed it by one of its stabilizing fins and shoved it back up the hole it came down, albeit it did not fit quite as well in the deployment shaft sideways as it had when it was oriented strait up and down. Other perturbed droids who were wishing to get into the fight, beat against the hapless fellow that had incited Wrex's rage. Wrex, who was quite amused with himself, grinned, set his shot gun to overload, wedged it between the wall and his artificial friend, and ran for cover. That's when the ceiling caved in.

So now there were Cerberus agents, confused droids, and no ceiling. Natural sunlight seemed absurd in the sterile environment of the lab. Shepard loved the new fact that there was no ceiling. This was going to be their out. What she did not love was that under fire, Sarah had decided it was time to prove true the old saw about not knowing what someone would be like in combat until they were actually in combat. Calm, calculated Sarah had suddenly decided to channel Ashley and go barreling into three Cerberus agents.

Sarah had once again, thrown her rifle away in favor of bare fisted fighting with the muscled agents. Maybe it was because Kyler was distracted by everything going on around her, but she had no idea how the first agent ended up on the ground clutching his side and the other ended up unconscious with a bloody head. _Dammit, Sarah. Don't get so close! Shoot them! Oh, wait here we go, she disarmed the last one and now has a rifle again. Good. NO, Sarah shoot him with it don't hit him with it. _Kyler slapped her forehead. The girl could fight but she desperately needed to learn tactics. She needed to get Sarah out of here before she felt responsible for the death of another Williams.

Lifting her arm in the mnemonic form she probably didn't even need anymore after years of biotic training, Shepard lifted the girl through the gaping hole in the ceiling and set her on the roof. A very disconcerted Sarah twisted and writhed as she tried to fight against gravity, not realizing it was Kyler doing the lifting. Wrex, seeing that they were making an escape did the same for Aleena and Kaidan between bursts of automatic fire from his assault rifle. He then picked up their mysterious new teammate and hoisted him through the hole. Kyler was back pedaling towards Wrex, continuously firing her shotgun until it overheated.

"Lady's first," Wrex said, proffering a knee for her to jump from. Once atop the facility she began adeptly shifting the gravitational forces around Wrex. Blue energy swirled around him as he began to ascend to the roof.

"Thanks for the lift," he commented.

"Anytime," Kyler replied amicably.

"Now what?"

"Oh, I'd say that we should probably intercept that contingent coming out of the garage over there," she indicated the wide door opening half a click away. With that Kyler carelessly dropped several grenades into the swarms of enemies below and leaped off the roof. Blue light danced about her features as she adeptly shifted magnetic fields to decelerate her landing. She rolled forward over her right shoulder as her feet hit the ground, tucking her shot gun under her arm as she tumbled, regained her feet and sprung forward into a standing position.

"I'd say she's got her stride back," Aleena quipped looking over the side of the building, her bad arm still wrapped tightly against her body.

Wrex grunted, "Show off."

He and Shepard bioticly passed the injured partied members down to the surface while Sarah and Kyler's father clambered down the side of the building. Sarah slipped the last few feet only to be caught by the man who was once her captor. She recoiled from his touch, but then apologized. For now, he appeared to be on their side.

"It's all right, Sarah."

"Thanks…what do I call you?"

He rolled it over in his head. Shepard was out. The first person that popped into everyone's mind when that name was called out was his daughter. "Chris. You can call me Chris."

"Good to meet you, Chris," Sarah smiled.

"Formal introductions later. Killing now," Wrex came up from behind them and ushered them to intercept the vehicle coming out of the garage.

A small shuttle was taxiing out of the garage and onto the air strip. Most likely the krogan was inside and Cerberus was gambling that none of their attackers were willing to kill the child in order to stop the craft from taking off.

"Sarah," Kyler called.

"Ma'am?" She acknowledged.

"Remember where we parked?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Double back to the Mako with Kaidan and Aleena. I have a feeling we're going to want that vehicle soon."

From the look on her face, Sarah had obviously inferred Kyler was trying to remove her from immediate danger but she moved to follow the commander's order anyway. She through an arm around Aleena and started towards the Mako. Kaidan lingered behind.

"What are you going to do?" Kaidan questioned.

"We'll figure something out," She laid a hand on his shoulder to reassure him. "We always do." She turned to go, letting her fingers linger on his shoulder a moment more. Chris noticed the conspicuous gesture, but said nothing.

With that Kyler, her father, and Wrex began running towards the craft.


	17. End Game Part III

Kyler still wasn't completely sure of this man who claimed to be her father. Somewhere inside, there was a young woman, bursting at the seems and overwhelmed with joy at the news that her father was alive. But she was tempered by an older and wiser conscious mind, which dampened her enthusiasm with the knowledge that this man could very well be laying a trap. It was one of the reasons he brought him with her instead of sending him back to the Mako with the wounded party members. She refused to let her loved ones be used as leverage against her. They were her strength, and she would not let them become her liabilities. And in the end, if he tried to betray them, it would be her responsibility to put him down.

For his part, the man who claimed to be Chris Shepard was about to go running full tilt into armed soldiers. These same soldiers were his former compatriots who would no doubt resent his treachery. Most likely, there would also be assault drones, automatic defenses, and who knows what else. There was no doubt in his mind that he was in mortal danger. However, his imminent and possibly gruesome demise was the furthest thing from his mind.

He'd spent years learning to gauge people, judge their responses, and predict their actions. It served him well in the mines, avoiding beatings from the overseers and identifying when one of his fellow slaves was collaborating. He further refined these skills during his years service to the Illusive Man, manipulating people ever so slightly, pushing them in one direction or another like a skilled puppet master, his doings so subtle that most of his targets believed the change in their plans was their idea. Chris had the ability to read people better than some can read their native tongue and he wasn't so sure how he felt about what he had just read in his daughter.

"Kylie, are you sleeping with your XO?" He blurted out.

"Uh...really not the time, dad," Kyler yelled. The sudden and out of place question threw her and she tripped into cover behind some micro terrain much less deftly than she intended. She wasn't sure why she didn't just tell him about her relationship with Kaidan. Per chance a small wary part of her was trying to protect him. The last thing she wanted was to have her husband used as leverage against her the way Sarah had been.

Wrex for his part roared with laughter, until Kyler's words sunk in. "What did you just say, Shepard?"

Kyler looked thoroughly annoyed as she launched a few grenades towards agents standing behind the metal barricades protecting the hangar. "He claims he's my father, but if he keeps up with this line of questioning he's going to end up like yours."

"Like how?" Chris inquired.

"Killed by his own offspring." Kyler glared.

"You are sleeping with him aren't you?" Chris had never been so annoyed with himself. He should have seen it. All the press conferences, photo ops, and award ceremonies... it was right in front of him. Alenko wasn't there because he was her right hand man and he was looking at her with more than just respect. Of course the extra-net tabloids had ran stories about them being a couple, but who would believe those.

"Dad, focus."

"I'm just saying..."

"He is not my XO anymore, I am in my mid thirties, and this is not the time to be fatherly."

Wrex was missing his shots wildly, his laughter destroying any semblance of marksmanship.

"Argh! That's it," Kyler screamed. With that she threw up a biotic barrier and stood up out of their trench. Using the mnemonic gesture she'd been taught early in her training to focus and shift the gravitational fields, Kyler lifted the metal barriers and then men behind them. The men spun awkwardly as they floated lazily skywards. Sometimes a stray limb would beat against the metal barricades as the men cartwheeled upwards, sounding a reverberating _ping_. They struggled and squirmed in Kyler's biotic grip until they fell limp, killed by a well placed shot from either Wrex or her father. After they were no longer a threat, Kyler allowed their lifeless bodies to drop to the ground.

Her two companions stood up to survey havoc they had just wrought. Kyler turned towards her father, "And per chance while we're playing twenty questions, you'd like to tell me when I was exposed to eezo and why you never told me."

Chris stood dumbfounded. Wrex looked from Shepard to Shepard and smiled. "Oh, this is going to be rich."

"Let's agree to answer each other's questions at a later time," he replied.

"Agreed."

"Pity," Wrex commented. "This was making the battle much more entertaining."

"Wrex, don't you have a species to save?" Kyler demanded in annoyance.

"Yeah, about that," Wrex turned to race towards the garage. What they were going to when the reached the shuttle was beyond him, but he wasn't ready to admit defeat. He never was.

***

"Oh!" Aleena moaned as she stumbled against the Mako. She and Sarah were on either side of Kaidan, who was remembering how much easier it was to walk with two good legs. The party opened the doors and jumped inside the cover of the vehicle.

"Now what?" Sarah asked.

"We should drive towards the other team, give them an out if they need it, and provide support by fire," Kaidan said through clenched teeth.

"What about the ship? If it takes off and hits FTL, all of this will have been for nothing." Aleena added in a half moan.

The threesome sat in silence as they each racked their brains. Then, Sarah cocked her head to the side and said, "Nav computers fail closed."

"What?" Aleena asked.

Kaidan understood immediately. "It's a safety feature. The navigational computers in shuttles use the global positioning satellites to feed the ship its own coordinates and the coordinates of other vessels. If the computer can't pick those up, it won't let the ship won't take off."

Sarah continued in the same excited, hurried tone that Kaidan had adopted. "They can override but it will take them some time. Even if they do we can confuse the signal, make the computer think it's already in the air, that there's an obstruction in their intended flight path, mess up their computer so badly that they are forced to shut down every automated function and fly entirely by manual, if they can even do that. Ever commandeer a satellite L.T.?"

"Do you know who you're talking to?"

By this time, the two engineers had their omni-tools lit and were talking back in forth in esoteric techno babble, leaving Aleena in jargon induced daze. "You two are making me miss Wrex," she said to herself even as she realized neither of them were listening to her. Aleena slumped back against her chair and dropped her head into her good hand.

***

The shuttle had stopped taxiing out of the garage.

"It should be taking off," Chris said.

"I'm not going to complain," Kyler said as they made their approach.

"Knock, knock" Wrex said ignoring the spray of fire from assault drones while running up to the shuttle and placing a shape charge on the door, his features partially obscured by the watery distortion of his biotic barrier. Wrex turned to run. Seconds later, the blast went off leaving the shuttle door hanging off its hinges.

"Here we go," Kyler said re-gripping her assault rifle and barreling in the door. She hooked right and dispatched the pilots first. They were still dazed from the explosion and didn't put up much of a fight. The control panel in front of them was still blinking some kind of warning message.

Her father and Wrex had banked left. One of the guards stared blankly at her father for a moment.

"Chris?" he'd asked. It was the last thing he said before a the butt of an assault rifle collided with his jaw. Wrex simply shot the other two gaurds.

Before they had time to get through the door to the back of the shuttle, it swished open. There stood a human dressed as a scientist, with his hands in the air. Wrex shot him.

"Wrex! He'd surrendered!" Kyler cried.

"Hmpf. I love the symmetry between our first and last missions together." He stepped over the body and into the back of the shuttle.

"He could have had information," Kyler said to the wall. The wall was the only one really listening. She shook her head. She guessed that was the difference between a merc, hired to kill, and an operative such as herself, sent on long term missions. One was much more concerned with intelligence gathering than the other. She shook her head again and followed them into the back of the shuttle.

"We got 'em," Wrex said in a tone Kyler didn't think he possessed. She had never once heard the krogan sound relieved or genuinely happy, and he'd just expressed both emotions in a single sentence. Wrex was checking the child's vitals, making sure he was merely unconscious. Kyler didn't even want to think about Wrex's reaction to the alternative. Satisfied, Wrex hoisted the unconscious child into his arms and activated his biotic barrier. Kyler could not believe the size of the young krogan.

"Wrex, how old is he?"

"About a month."

Kyler thanked the fates of the universe that she was born a human woman.

"Let's go," Chris urged upon seeing a fresh wave of enemies.

Wrex cradled the baby lizard like a football and bolted to one of the fallen barricades outside the garage. Kyler and Chris followed behind him, back pedaling as they fired their assault rifles. Once the three of them were behind cover, Chris asked the inevitable question.

"Now what?"

There was a thundering boom as the Mako's main cannon fired into the garage, followed up by the steady rhythm of its machine gun. The vehicle fish tailed to a halt next to the trio and the door was thrust open.

"Need a lift?" Sarah smiled.

Kyler smiled. Sarah was a girl after her own heart.

"Wrex. Chris. Take the kid and squeeze in there," Kyler ordered.

Wrex complied and quickly took Aleena's place on the turret gun. Aleena took the baby krogan in her good arm and crammed herself into the small back seat.

"What about you?" Chorused Chris and Kaidan.

Kyler smiled and Chris understood.

"No," he demanded. "I've told you repeatedly..."

"Oh get in the vehicle. I did this hundreds of times as a kid."

Chris started to protest but Kyler snapped and insisted that they had no time. With that she shut the door behind them and jumped onto the roof. Once she had a firm grip on the vehicle she slammed the windshield twice and gave a thumbs up to Sarah in the driver's seat. The vehicle took off.

Kyler smiled to herself. THIS, was going to be fun.

Inside the Mako, the mood was tense. Sarah raced towards the team's shuttle. On the radar, three small red blips appeared behind them. "We've got company."

The pursuit vehicles were smaller, but they were faster, and they began launching rockets. Apparently, the krogan child was not leaving this planet alive if Cerberus had anything to say about it. Sarah swerved and banked randomly, trying to avoid the explosives. They were almost to the shuttle.

"Just a few more seconds..." she said through a strained expression and clenched teeth.

The pursuit vehicles now overtook the Mako and headed for the shuttle. The outcome was obvious even before the shuttle was a smoking hulk of ash and fire.

"Sarah," Kaidan yelled. "Drive to these coordinates," he marked them on the radar screen. "I've got one more ace in the hole." Sarah shifted directions and slammed on the accelerator.

"And try to remember my wife is clinging to the top of the Mako."

Unfortunately for the Cerberus vehicles, in their haste to destroy the team's shuttle, the forgot to take into account the angry krogan behind the turret of the Mako. One of the tiny vehicles erupted into flames as it was hit by a rocket and the other was substantially slowed as Wrex subjected its wheels to continuous machine gun fire.

Suddenly, there was a thundering _boom_. The occupants of the vehicle were thrown to the side as the mako was pushed over by a shock wave. Kyler was flung off the Mako and went rolling away. At first, they thought one of the rockets had found their mark. Then looking over the horizon they saw there had been a very large if fairly distant explosion. Kyler shook off the residual effects of the crash and estimated it's location. Sudden realization compelled her to check her watch. 1530. They had planned to kill her, Sarah, and her father. The explosion in the mountain side was probably meant to look like one of the old strip mining operations had been set off again. When mountaintop removal ended on earth after coal had become obsolete, many of the companies controlling the mines were so bankrupt they couldn't even afford to pull all their equipment out. Some had even left their explosives in place. It was a good cover for Cerberus if they wanted to plant their own explosives.

The rest of the team was crawling out of the wrecked vehicle in various states of disorientation and disrepair. Chris Shepard, for his part, simply stared out into the distance, to the building he had held Sarah in, to the building he was still supposed to be in.

"I can't believe it..." he whispered.

Kyler felt a moment of heart winching pity. Despite her hatred for Cerberus, this was still her father, who had just been betrayed by the only thing he'd been able to believe in since Mindoir.

"Dad..."she put an armored hand on his shoulder.

"I...you never really convinced me that the organization was bad, Kylie. I just chose my loyalty to you over my loyalty to them. I just can't believe..."

"Dad, I'm sorry, but we need to keep moving."

As if to reinforce her point the Cerberus agents who had been busily extracting themselves from their own toppled vehicles began firing in their direction.

The Mako was the only viable cover for now and team drew behind it. Despite the fact that the team had grown 30% larger since landing, they were still outnumbered and surrounded. The occupants of the closest Cerberus vehicle had fixed them in place with their fires and the occupants from the further vehicle were preparing to flank them.

"I don't suppose your ace in the hole could come to us," Sarah shouted to Kaidan over the radio.

"He most certainly can little lady," came a very familiar drawl over the radio.

From overhead the deafening roar of space craft engines drowned out all other sound. Kaidan looked up to see an over-engineered stunt craft, the kind you'd find at a weekend air show, streaking in.

"Joker, dammit! Didn't I tell you we'd probably be under fire? Why the hell would you bring that thing?"

"Don't get your knickers in a knot. Sheesh." With that Joker maneuvered his vessel into a barrel roll, just for style points, and then over the now unshielded Cerberus agents. He non-chalantly shifted his engines for a vertical landing. Kaidan was grateful for the roar of the engines, as it drowned out the hideous cries of the now crispy agents.

The on ramp lowered and the party ran in.

"Joker did I ever tell you how much I hate your mouth?" Kaidan asked.

"Yeah, but you love my flying. Whoa! Let's get out of here. We're about to have friends."

"That'd be a first for you, Joker" Kaidan said sliding into the co-pilot's chair.

The vessel raced for the atmosphere. It was fast and agile, which was nice, but it also had little armor and no weapons.

"Why did you bring this thing?" Kaidan asked.

"Thing? This is one of the fastest, most maneuverable ships in the galaxy! Besides, she's got style," he said stroking the console. "And I thought you were kidding about the whole, 'under fire' thing. How was I supposed to know you two came out of retirement? Here I just thought you missed me."

Joker sped for the Arcturus relay. They were one jump away from victory. The pilot plotted the approach vector that would take them to the safest place he could think of. The familiar arc of the relay reached out and grabbed the vessel drawing it into mass effect flight. When the ship popped back into open space, it was followed by several Cerberus vessels. Kaidan remembered their configuration from Amatersau.

Just as each individual braced for imminent demise in their own way, a turian vessel came into view. This was no average turian frigate either. This was a large dreadknot which hung in space before them. The angles of the design were sharp and fierce, revealing several large weapon systems and giving it a menacing look. It reached out with its powerful cannons and obliterated the pursuing ships. For a second, there was dead silence while it dawned on everyone that they had won. That silence was shattered as each occupant of the ship let out everything from resounding whoops to varied versions of "hell, yeah!" At which point, a very familiar face appeared on screen.

"Shepard, welcome back to the Citadel. I assume you were successful, otherwise I doubt your pursuers would have followed you here."

"Yes, Garrus. We've got 'em."

"In that case, the council would like to see you."

"Garrus," Kyler replied, "I'm not a SPECTRE anymore. The council can kiss my ass."

The SPECTRE remained silent for a long moment.

"The council is on your ship, aren't they?"

"No, but I did have an open comm link with them when your vessel emerged from the relay."

"Good to see some things never change, Shepard," came the surly voice of the Turian councilman.

"Whoops!" Joker interjected as he cut the link to Garrus' ship. "Damn comm's busted again, ma'am."

Kyler smiled, a real smile that Kaidan hadn't seen from her in a long time. He was almost blinded by its radiance. It was as if he'd been in a darkened room these past few weeks and his eyes had become adjusted. He hadn't realized how bright, how wonderful it was to see his wife happy again.

She approached her old friend in the pilot's seat and put a hand on his shoulder, "Thanks, Joker. You're always were there just in the nick of time."

"Makes for better drama, ma'am. Oh an ma'am?"

"I know, Joker. You like your medals in gold."

"That's what I'm talking about."

Joker set about to docking with the Citadel and Kyler turned to join the crowd in the back of Joker's ship. Chris was sitting sullenly and pensive in the corner. Aleena, Wrex and Sarah looked on as Kaidan checked over the infant krogan. He smiled and looked up at Wrex.

"Seem's all right to me, Wrex. The doctors on the citadel should be able to tell you more but initial scans show him to be healthy and free of the genophage mutation."

Wrex looked strange pleased, almost fatherly, as he picked up the massive infant, "Don't you worry tiny warrior. From this day on, I am your personal body guard."

Aleena smiled and turned away from the scene. Kaidan, curious, approached her.

"How's your arm, Aleena?"

"I've had worse," She replied, inspecting the wounded limb.

"There's still something I don't get, Aleena."

"What's that, Alenko?"

"After you had the OSD, you had everything the shadow broker wanted. You didn't have to come with us to Earth."

Aleena smirked and averted her gaze. "I knew you would be the one to discover me."

A lopsided smile and realization crossed Kaidan's face at the same time. "Were you ever really working for the shadow broker?"

"No. I'd heard about the kidnaping through other channels. When I was framed, my contacts warned me of the situation."

"You came to help Wrex."

The asari nodded sheepishly.

"You could have just told me," Wrex rumbled.

Aleena jumped. She hadn't realized Wrex had turned his attention from the child to her. "Wrex, what was I supposed to say? Even though you tried to kill me once I'm still in love with you?"

"Yes."

Aleena paused. "Well... that was simple."

"No reason to complicate it."

Joker decided it was high time her ruined the smarmy moment. "Awww....Wrex, I've never seen this side of you."

Kyler laughed. "Well, Wrex. You have the child and looks like you're going to want to be alone. Does this mean we can pick up Ash and go home?"

"I'll allow it," he said not really paying attention. His attention was still focused on the child and Aleena.

"Who's Ash?" Kyler's father asked, drawn out of his morose thoughts.

"Our son," Kaidan answered amicably.

"You got my daughter pregnant?" The elder Shepard exclaimed, getting to his feet.

Kaidan was still stuttering when Kyler's father knocked him out cold.

"Umm...Sir," Sarah ventured, gaining his attention. "They're married."

The entire party confirmed the fact.

"Oh, well that's different. Sorry, son."

Kaidan moaned unintelligible forgiveness from the floor.

Kyler went to help him up as she silently wondered if she was ever going to convince her father that she was no longer sixteen.

_____________________________________________________________________________

**Don't worry. I know. There's a few loose ends. I'm finishing this thing this weekend if it kills me. (Otherwise I fear Andy Wong may kill me. =-)**


	18. Fallout

_Kyler was sitting on one of the many park benches that adorned the Citadel Tower. She had allowed the rhythmic sound of the artificial waterfalls and the relaxing smell of cherry blossoms to lull her into a day dream. It was uncustomarily lax of her but she was feeling uncustomarily at peace. _

"_Do you remember what I said the first time we came here?" Ashley Williams asked as she approached the commander, wearing that damnable pink armor Kyler had found her in on Eden Prime. The sudden sound of a familiar and even welcome voice still startled Kyler into reaching for her pistol. _

"_Jeeze, Skipper. I think you've been in one too many fire fights," Ash laughed as she plopped down next to her friend._

"_You know, Ash. I think you're right." She said dropping her hand away from the weapon and running her fingers through her hair. "What's with the pink armor, Ash? What ever happened to that Predator stuff I bought you?"_

"_I like my pink armor. And you didn't answer my question." _

"_That the stair cases were for more than just show. That they would make good defensive positions. Too bad you didn't live long enough to get the chance to see how right you were."_

"_Oh, I saw all right. Had a better view than even you did, Skipper. I thought you would have heard my resounding "Called it!" all the way from Heaven."_

_Kyler gave her a small laugh. "Oh, Ash. You always were a fun one."_

"_Well someone had to lighten the mood. Between your obsession with the mission and L.T. being wound tighter than a clock it would have been one boring ship without me. With the possible exception of Joker."_

"_I think he still misses you, ya know."_

"_He'd better. But at least he's let me go."_

"_What's that supposed to mean?"_

"_Skipper, you need to me go. You don't need my memory to drive you anymore."_

"_She's right, sis." Wes said dropping in from the opposite side. He draped an arm around his sister's shoulder and grinned. "There's no reason to hold on to us anymore."_

"_What? You want me to just pretend neither of your were important to me? I can't just forget you," Kyler protested._

"_We're not asking for you to forget us, Skipper. We're just asking...help me out here, Wes. I'm not a word person."_

"_Kylie, we've served our purpose. We've been the motivation you needed to get through a difficult life, but you don't need that anymore." _

"_So just move on? Forget the loving big brother who always looked after me? Forget the woman who was like a sister to me, who always had my back in a fight?"_

"_No. But forget that I was brutally killed in an attack there was nothing you could have done to prevent. You don't need the memory to keep you going anymore, to give you the will to fight, even when you didn't think you could win."_

"_And forget that I was killed by a crazed power hungry maniac who forced you to make a choice no human being should have to make. I don't want you to carry that with you anymore. I don't want you to remember me like that. You know what I want you to remember? I want you to remember all the times I mouthed off in front of the wrong big wigs and you had to pretend to be angry with me. I want you to remember that night I got both L.T. and Liara hammered and the two meekest, most self controlled individuals on the ship got into a biotic fist fight with some random group of human-hating turians defending your honor."_

"_Yeah, and I want you to remember the look on dad's face the day we used his spare parts for the power generator to build a hover board and then crashed it into mom's vegetable garden."_

"_Yes, remember us. Remember the lesson's our deaths taught you."_

"_That someone has to stand up for the weak and the innocent."_

"_To spend time with your friends now, because the may be gone tomorrow. Hell, if I didn't kick it I'm pretty sure I would STILL be trying to get you and L.T. together, along with half the crew." Ash added, rolling her eyes._

"_But just take a little emphasis off the end, all right? You've done our memories justice. Now the only thing we want from you is to be happy. And if you don't go about doing that right quick I'm going to have the Chief hold you while I noogie your head."_

"_Great," Kyler exhaled. "I finally thought I'd gotten over the nightmares and now I'm awake, hallucinating that the puerile ghost of my brother is back from the dead to haunt me and he's enlisted the help of my dead best friend to help torture me."_

"_You can think you're hallucinating if you want, Skipper, but I was right about the staircases. What makes you think I wasn't right about Heaven?" Ash got up to leave and playfully proffered her arm to Wes._

"_It's time to let go. Think about it, sis," Wes concluded while batting Ash's arm away and joining his companion apparition. He slipped his arm around Ash's waist in a friendly manner as they walked away. Before they faded from view, Wes turned to call of his shoulder._

" _And hey, sis. We love you."_

A smile crept across the former Spectre's lips. "I love you, too."

"Thanks," Kaidan replied as he approached the bench, Sarah in tow. He helped his wife up to standing, "But I already knew that."

"How is everything going?"

"Wrex and Aleena just got back from the med clinic with the kid. He's fine. The 'happy couple' and Joker are watching your dad back at the ship right now." Kyler could tell from the expression on his face that he was glad to be free of guard duty. Her father had no doubt interrogated him non-stop these past few hours. "Garrus said he'd meet us here." Kaidan finally stopped his report to take in his surroundings.

"Wow. It's been awhile since we've done this," Kaidan reminisced.

Kyler smiled in return. "Well on the bright side, after saving the galaxy several times over, they tend not to question us anymore."

"Yeah, but I'm pretty sure the turian still doesn't like you."

"Maybe I'll make Garrus do all the talking. Speak of the devil."

"Shepard, no matter how many times you've explained that particular idiom to me, I still prefer not to be referred to as a 'devil.'"

"I'm sorry, Garrus," she laughed, a real laugh that reached her eyes. She was much more her usual self today. Kaidan knew part of it had to do with being well rested and that part of it was having the mission over with and behind her. But this new light spirit was in his opinion, mostly due to the fact he'd told her that Kralag was dead. He didn't go into any particular details, but the knowledge that he could never hurt her and anyone else again was enough to assuage at least a little of the hurt she suffered on Mindoir.

"It's alright, Commander. I know you meant no offense. Are you ready? The council is waiting."

Kaidan guffawed, "Do you remember when Garrus 'didn't care what the Council or C-Sec thought' and 'didn't want to be held back by all the red tape and political bull!' Now he's concerned about keeping the bosses waiting."

"Well, your wife had something to do with that. Although, I'd like to think I've retained some of my maverick tendencies."

Kyler smiled a knowing smile. "Don't we all, Garrus. Don't we all. You okay, Sarah?" Kyler called to the distracted girl. Sarah was wandering aimlessly, staring at the high-vaulted ceilings.

"Sorry, ma'am. This place just seems a bit overwhelming."

"I think that's the intended effect," came a voice from behind. Sarah recognized it as the voice of the captain who'd tried to recruit her for the special forces.

"Captain Santiago," Kyler smiled. She was doing that a lot lately and Kaidan couldn't get enough of it.

"You know him, ma'am?" Sarah asked.

"Know me? More like made me. Shepard recruited me."

"Well if you here for Williams, you have an eye for talent."

"So I hear. Add some training and discipline to that raw talent I read about in the commander's report about and we'll have ourselves quite the warrior, maybe even better than you, Shepard."

"Banish the thought!" Kyler cried in mock horror.

"What do you say, Williams? Reconsider my offer?"

"On one condition, Sir."

"What's that, candidate?"

"Shepard takes me back to OCS. No offense, Sir, but the last time I talked to you I ended up being knocked out and abducted."

Captain Santiago laughed, "Already paranoid. That'll keep you alive. Although, I assure you, I'm no agent of Cerberus."

Garrus shifted uncomfortably, "Shepard..."

"We're coming, Garrus, we're coming."

It had always been a surreal experience climbing the stairs to the council ever since the geth attack. Time spent away from the place only added to the effect. Shepard swore she felt the palpable presence of Ashley Williams she watched Sarah take in the Citadel Tower with the same mix of disdain and wonderment her sister once held at the sheer size and extravagance of the place. She shook her head to clear herself of the ghost of her lost friend and approached the council. Once she was within view of the council, Councilor David Anderson gave her a welcoming smile. As usual, the asari councilor spoke first.

"It appears we are once again in your debt, Shepard."

"Alenko," Kaidan interjected before he realized how rankled he was. He's ears turned bright red as he realized what he had done. All this time, Wrex had prodded him, pushed him, purposely using the maiden name, not because it was familiar or because he didn't know any better like many of their other acquaintances, but to aggravate and provoke Kaidan for the krogan's own entertainment. And all this time, he'd maintained his trademark calm. Now he went and threw away years of careful concealment because he couldn't bare it one last time. He felt the onset of a headache that had nothing to do with his L2 implant growing behind his temples.

His outburst drew curious eyes from bystanders and the alien council members alike. Even Kyler glanced sideways at her husband. She wasn't expecting him to out them, let alone in the council chambers. However, Councilor Anderson merely smirked. It appeared that Kyler and Kaidan had been a little more transparent to him than to others.

"I apologize. Apparently congratulations are in order?" The asari continued.

"Ummm...not for sometime council woman. We've been married for awhile now. As for your earlier statement, it was a team effort," Kyler not-so-deftly skirted the issue.

The salarian councior continued, "So noted in your report."

The turian councilor plowed into the heart of the conversation without so much as a nod to a segue. It was obvious that he was not partial to the tactful diplomatic protocols of the asari nor the dancing subtlety of words of the salarians. "Cerberus has served its purpose in the past, but this organization has gotten wildly out of control. It must be dismantled and put permanently out of commission."

Councilman Anderson spoke up. "Cerberus has its tendrils in deep and in many powerful places. It will not be easy. They might even be large enough and powerful enough that trying to destroy them could trigger a human civil war."

"This will require a deft touch with intricate knowledge of how the organization works. Commander, would you be willing to lead the task force charged with Cerberus' destruction," the asari councilor inquired.

Kyler took a deep breath and a long look at Kaidan.

_It's time to let go, sis. _

_Seriously, Skipper. Don't make me come down there._

Hallucinations or not, they were right. She knew this was an important mission with far reaching implications, but dammit, she'd saved the galaxy three times over and put out countless other smaller brush fires. It was hard to admit but it was time someone else cleaned up the universe. She'd done her part and she wasn't going to spend the rest of her life looking for a fight.

"No."

"No?" The turian councilman asked incredulously.

She smiled at Kaidan and he smiled back. She turned to face the council again.

"No. You have other Spectres, other assets. I'm not the only woman in the galaxy capable of putting things right. I'm sorry, but I'm through. This time is for my family."

Councilman Anderson quirked an eyebrow. "You've been busy all this time you were off the grid."

Kyler deflected. "If I may, council members, Garrus Vakarian is a highly trained, highly motivated operative who is extremely dedicated and quick on his feet. Might I suggest the task fall to him."

The council consulted each other off line and then the asari spoke, "We would have preferred a human Spectre, to keep things 'in house' as you would say, but the council agrees that Vakarian would be an excellent choice."

Garrus nodded to the council and then to Kyler in turn, indicating his gratitude to both.

The turian council member provided the proverbial rain on everyone's parade. "This still leaves the matter of what to do with Chris Shepard, the Cerberus defector. He is guilty of crimes against the Citadel space. Where is he now?"

"He's on our ship, under the watch of Urdnot Wrex," Kyler said.

"You have a mercenary keeping watch on a Cerberus agent?"

"He doesn't work for Cerberus anymore and if I may be so bold, this council owes Wrex almost as much as it owes me, if not more."

"This is true," said the salarian. "And in recognition for his efforts the salarian government will be providing funding and some of its top scientists to aid in the reconstruction of the genophage cure."

"But what of the matter at hand," demanded the turian council member. "What are we to do with the defector? Can he be trusted? Does he have valuable information? We should arrest and interrogate him."

"My father is not a flight risk. He has no where to go," Kyler cried. "He's betrayed Cerberus. Where would he run to? Outside the protection of the Citadel he is a dead man."

"You must admit that you are biased in this matter, Commander," the asari pointed out calmly. "I assure you he will be treated fairly but for the time being must be taken into custody, if only for his own protection. As you mentioned, Cerberus has most likely already ordered his assassination." That asari council member paused. "We would allow you to be the one to bring him in if that makes this any easier."

Kyler deflated. She'd just regained her father and now she felt like she was losing him again. Life had a way of kicking her in the teeth every time she thought all was well.

"Thank you, councilor. I think I'll do that."

***

Kyler dragged her feet like a sullen child as she entered Joker's ship. She couldn't even meet her father's eyes as he came forward to greet her.

"Don't look so sad, Kylie. They order my arrest?"

"How'd you know?"

"Only logical thing for them to do. At best I'm a perishable source of information at risk for assassination. At worst, I'm a sleeper agent for Cerberus. This wasn't unexpected."

"I finally get you back. I finally believe you're you. And I lose you all over again." The trained operative melted away leaving only a hurt child where humanity's greatest hero once stood. She looked up at her father with pleading eyes, as if there was something he could do or say to make things right again.

"You can never lose me, Kylie," he said embracing his daughter. "Here," he whispered breaking the embrace and placing a small device in her hands.

"What is this?"

"An OSD. It's not much, just some voice recordings of things I wanted to tell you when I finally found you. Memories, musings, life lessons and such. There's a even a couple of old pictures and vid clips in there. My personal favorite is of you mom chasing you and your brother out of the vegetable garden, each of you with tomatoes in hand and in mouth."

Kyler clutched the OSD to her chest. "Thank you, dad."

"Come on. Lets go before you get in trouble."

***

Chris Shepard was finally at peace. He was finally sure of his daughter's safety. Not only had she survived the batarian attack he'd thought had killed her, she had thrived. She had moved on, had a successful life, married, and started her own family. He even got the chance to pass on every story, every thought of his he'd wanted her to have. It was more than he ever dared to hope for. And now, she lived far enough off the grid that he was certain she would be safe, at least for a little while. There was only one thing left that could compromise her.

Her father. Cerberus would find him. They would use him as bait to draw her out into the open, away from her family and into danger. He wouldn't allow that. His daughter would have peace and happiness if it was his last act in this life. In fact, he was certain it would be.

So he lay back on his prison bunk, certain in the knowledge that once his eyes were closed the would never again open. It was a fair exchange, a price he would gladly pay. He hadn't survived Mindoir anyways, not really.

As feeling slipped away from his fingers he dropped a small OSD to the floor, it's only contents his intel on Cerberus and a request; that his daughter not be informed of his suicide.

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**Mwuahahahaha....all right. I know you all hate me now. Let me have it.**

**One more chapter. Best finish this thing before the next game comes out and my story is completely unplausible. Alas, it's fun to muck around in the future, but it does have it's dangers.**


	19. Epilogue

It was a quiet night in the hab the Alenko's occupied on Torox. A small red light on an encrypted communications array diligently winked on and off, indicating that it held a message from the recently commissioned Sarah Williams detailing her graduation and arrival at MOS school. A digital display on the wall faithfully flipped through random pictures at its assigned intervals, first showing a picture of the crew of the Normandy tossing back a few drinks at Flux during a rare liberty, next morphing into the image of two lanky, red-headed preteens waving from the branches of a tree, and finally displaying an exuberant Ashley Williams dancing around a disgruntled Garrus who had just lost a marksmanship contest to the Chief.

Down the hall, Ash was peacefully settled into his bed, none the worse for wear for his adventures to and on Amaterasu. The Williams sisters had been heartbroken to see him go. Mrs. Williams had commented dryly that per chance this will serve as incentive for them to get married and have their own offspring. She needed grandchildren to dote on.

The new gear Wrex and Aleena had provided with their ample mercenary credits was strewn about the living room with little regard to its condition or value. Drill instructors across the galaxy blanched at this blatant disregard for the dictum, "rifle, gear, self."

The house was calm and quiet. Life was as normal as it could get and his family was safe. Kaidan could not ask for more. He rolled towards his wife and gently moved a stray hair from his wife's face. She took his hand, kissed it, and held it to herself.

"I've missed this," she said softly.

Kaidan pressed his lips gently to hers. "Me too."

"We're not really great at pillow talk aren't we?" Kyler teased.

"I prefer actions to words," Kaidan smiled as he repositioned himself on top of her and pressed his body against hers, grinning a devious smile. Kyler laughed her beautiful laugh again. Free, unmarred, it was the best sound in the world.

There was a knock at the door.

Kaidan rolled his eyes. "I swear to God if that's Tali asking for help reclaiming her home world, we're moving."

Kyler laughed again and as he looked into her eyes, he didn't care if it really was Tali. Right now, with his wife in his arms, he felt like he could take on the universe...or at the very least a homeworld.

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**So... the end. Wow. That's it. Seriously, I might go back and do some touch ups but the story itself is complete. Didn't think this thing was going to end up 19 chapters long nine months ago when I started it. Didn't think it would take nine months to finish either. Silly work, getting in the way of more important things... like fanfic. I realize the quality really tapered off at the end when I just wanted to finish, especially starting at Endgame, and for that I must apologize. In the future I think I will write the whole story before posting. That way if I do something silly on a whim, like oh, I don't know, bring the main character's father back from the dead and effectively write myself into a corner, I can fix it and no one will be the wiser. Seriously shouldn't have done that. That was just a horrible call. In fact, I think that's why I killed him. It was a vengeance killing. You messed up my story! Now, DIE! Anyhow, overall I was pretty happy. Now, obviously at the end of any project, thanks are due.**

**To the reviewers. Nothing gives you more encouragement than a complete stranger telling you to keep going. So thank you. Some of you even reviewed every single chapter as I posted them from the beginning. Some of your reviews gave me different ideas. A couple of you even gave me a little writer's block pep talk when I got towards the end and really needed a kick in my lazy butt to just buckle down and finish. You're awesome. Thank you.**

**To heraclitus1. Thanks for letting me bounce ideas off you. And for the chapters you had time to proof, thanks for making fun of my grammar...jerk. **

**Thanks to the husband who puts up with my ridiculous hobbies, even if he can't understand them. (And who will never see this thank you because he still flatly refuses to read fanfic.)**

**And of course, thanks to BioWare who made up all these great characters that I don't own (although I may really wish I owned a certain Lt...) and an amazing storyline.**


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